Irish translation costs get 'undue attention'

Costs for the translation of public documents into Irish receive undue attention, when they are only a very small percentage of the overall cost of producing the documents, particularly as only a few key documents require translation, according to Minister for Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív.

The Minister was speaking during a heated debate on the Government's statement on the Irish language last December and the five-year-old Coimisiún na Gaeltachta report.

Strong language and sharp outbursts ensued during the three-hour debate as praise for the Minister's efforts to advance the status of the Irish language was drowned out by criticisms that he was the "Minister of the long finger", that he had no support from his Cabinet colleagues for the language, that he was wasting money and "living in the past".

Mr Ó Cuív said the cost of translation of documents was "just a small percentage of the cost of the provision of the documents" and that many documents did not need to be printed, but could be put on the internet.

"There are two official languages spoken in this State" and he believed that "the citizen has a right to have these documents translated into the two official languages".

However, John Deasy (FG, Waterford) a persistent critic of translation costs, said such translations could cost tens of millions of euro, "stripped from local authority and department budgets in order to satisfy the Minister's own personal whims when it comes to the Irish language".

Bur Mr Ó Cuív said he had "resisted the demand from the Opposition for more translation. That's what your party wanted. Don't twist the truth".

Mr Deasy said: "You're wasting money in the present and it has been confirmed by public officials in every local authority in the country. You should stop living in the past."

Dinny McGinley, Fine Gael's deputy Gaeltacht spokesman, said the findings of the linguistic study into the use of Irish in Gaeltacht areas were a "May Day" distress call and that "unless there is an immediate and positive response, we could witness within a short number of years the vanishing of areas where Irish is the every day spoken language."

Labour's Gaeltacht spokesman Brian O'Shea described Mr Ó Cuív as "Aire na méara fada, Minister of the long finger".

Mr O'Shea said he was "sick and tired of studies, committees and forums being established when little or nothing is happening in regard to the crisis facing the Gaeltacht and the Irish language generally."

When he called for a "full audit of the amount of money spent by the State in various ways on the Irish language, which could easily be of the order of €1 billion", Mr Ó Cuív interrupted and said that "if the deputy asserts that money spent on TG4 represents spending on the Irish language, that is the equivalent of saying money spent on RTÉ represents spending on the English language".

"By that calculation, if €1 billion is spent on Irish, €51 billion is spent on English."

Sinn Féin spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh said Mr O'Shea was talking "bulls**t" and he called for more resources to be spent on the language and in encouraging Irish speakers to move into Gaeltacht areas, which had been done in the past when Irish language primary schools were threatened with closure.

Michael Ring, Fine Gael spokesman, called for the establishment of a specific committee to deal with the Gaeltacht.

"There are 24 committees of the Oireachtas, 24 chairmen and 24 vice-chairmen, but not one committee exclusively for the Gaeltacht. It is a disgrace that the Houses of the Oireachtas do not have a committee dealing exclusively with the Gaeltacht," Mr Ring said.