The plan includes so-called golden hellos, an extra initial payment to attract new teachers; mechanisms to pay teachers to go to certain areas; and taking non-Gaelic speaking teachers out of the classroom to learn the language to be able to teach in the medium of Gaelic.

Speaking in Benbecula, BnG chairman Art Cormack said: "The extra payments will come with conditions, on the basis that teachers stay in the area for a certain period of time. There are some Gaelic teachers who are without work at the moment, or are working in English because of where they live.

"We also need to look at whether we train teachers who don't speak Gaelic at the moment, particularly at secondary school level, to learn the language and go into the classroom to teach in the medium of Gaelic.

"It's a longer term proposition, but there are courses available and it should be possible within a year, although they would have to come out of the classroom to do it."

He added the board had also worked on the new Action Plan required by culture minister Mike Russell to increase the number of Gaelic speakers.

He said: "While we haven't increased the number of Gaelic speakers we have slowed the decline, and improved the standard at school age level."

BnG board members held their latest meeting in South Uist, visiting the Uists for the first time in BnG's four year history as part of a move to take the organisation out of Inverness and around the country for half of its bi-monthly board meetings.
The meeting was held at Cothrom, a bi-lingual community training and development organisation in South Uist.

Members later dispersed to visit other Gaelic-related projects in South Uist, including Kildonan museum, community landlords Storas Uibhist and Tobar An Dualchais, a project to digitise and preserve 18,000 hours of Gaelic and Scots recordings.

BnG board member Rob Dunbar of Aberdeen University School of Law and Department of Celtic praised what he found during his visit.
Of Cothrom he said: "It's great to have facilities like that based on the islands. There has to be a lot more local development. Jobs, employment opportunities and local initiatives based on local knowledge and skills are important for the islands as a whole."
BnG also held an evening reception for Gaelic-speaking community members in Benbecula.