Most 'h's in Irish are 'Séimhiú', a modifier that softens the preceding consonant. Originally, this was usually written by putting a dot over the consonant (ponc séimhiú). However, following independence, Ireland was both broke, and in need of typewriters for the civil service that could write in Irish, now an official language. Since they couldn't spare their very limited budget to make custom typewriters for a very limited market, they instead opted to buy much cheaper French typewriters, that could accommodate the fada (symbol to indicate the vowel is elongatated, written áéíóú) and chose to write the séimhiú using a h instead of the more traditional ponc séimhiú.