You can also get those letters as Unicode ċ 0108 and ġ 0121 respectively.
I think that this is implicit in my statement: “Depending on the context, references to the British parliament also often mean just the House of Commons.”
Further, I would extend that to most Westminster-style parliamentary systems. It is very common in casual speech as well as in news reports for the term “parliament” to be used when talking about the lower house.
“dosage”? Is this like “ghoti”? 
It’s more or less “uh-ROCK-tuss”, although sometimes the first syllable is given a short i sound.
I think that given the differences it’s excusable. The House of Commons is not the only House that has real political power, the Dáil is. Granted the House of Lords doesn’t have a huge amount of political power, but the Seanad really doesn’t have any. It’s a talking shop. The Dáil is the real Parliament because that’s where the real lawmaking goes on. So if the BBC or anyone else wants to refer to it as the Parliament, I have no problem with that.
The word may not be a borrowing from Irish, but the usage is borrowed from Irish. Nobody calls the police “guards” in other English-speaking countries, that I’m aware of. The reason they do in Ireland is as shorthand for their formal, Irish name, the Garda Síochána. The origin of the word “Garda” is not the point.
tea - shocks or tea shaw. Hope this helps anyone who wishes to correctly pronounce the Irish name of the Prime Minister.
Excuse me, but with all this interesting stuff, I don’t know what Taoiseach means in English…
More or less the Irish prime minister.
Why did you revive an eight-month old zombie with an answer that was already given in the second post?
Literally it’s “the risen cream” - the finest and best.
Just in case someone takes that seriously, literally it’s “first” and by extension “leader, chief.” Both senses are very old, present in Old Irish taoisech.
Well I’ll be demmed. I was actually told this by a teacher of Irish, but having just looked it up I see that you ae correct. Those bastards do have a load of fun with us at the immersion weekends.
Must go plot revenge . . .
You should probably hold off on the revenge, I think it was probably the Irish word for president: uachtarán
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uachtarán#Irish
This comes from the word uachtar, which means top, and also means cream.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uachtar
Although, maybe the irish teacher got it all mixed up and told you this was the meaning of taoiseach…
Oh bilge. My mistake. Now what am I going to do with all these garden gnomes?
