FG 'wrong' to back provisions of languages Act

Implementation of the Official Languages Act is "all over the shop" with some Government departments spending €200,000 or €300,000 on translation and some spending only €3, Fine Gael TD John Deasy said.

During a Dáil debate on the Irish language, the Waterford deputy said that Fine Gael made a mistake in voting for some provisions of the Act, and the Opposition needed to make it clear that if it was in government after the next general election it would repeal aspects of the legislation.

"We made a mistake in voting in favour of some provisions of the Act and the Government did also. I am man enough to stand up and say so," he said. The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív, should acknowledge he made a mistake in spending on Irish translation, he said.

But in a staunch defence of the Act and its provisions, Mr Ó Cuív said that the number of documents requiring translation was very limited and these were major policy documents.

He pointed out that the total cost of translation between all departments was €300,000. "The total expenditure of those departments is approximately €50 billion and the cost of compliance should be put in that context."

During the two-hour debate Mr Deasy said that "people are confused" and "the amounts involved in some departments are hundreds of thousands of euro and in others it is less than €10".

He said that "if measures are shoved down people's throats they will react badly".

Addressing the Minister, he said that "officials have more important matters to attend to than catering to your whims, of which this measure is an example and which is not working".

Mr Ó Cuív told the Dáil he was "purposely speaking in English because there is no way of getting the English language media to listen if one speaks in Irish".

He said that "all these matters were debated in detail in Irish but when the Act was passed there were complaints that they had not been told anything. English translations were provided but nobody bothered with them."

The Minister said there were ways of reducing costs. There were many pages that were not read in Irish or English, but "when they were produced in English nobody ever read them and it never worried anyone that they were growing bigger".

The reason for the Act "was to stop funds designated for the Irish language being sucked out".

Mr Ó Cuív pleaded with bodies such as the county enterprise boards to stop sending him the hard copies of their documents which, he said, went "straight into the waste paper basket". He would "much prefer if they sent me notification that their annual reports are available on the internet".

In reference to a bilingual leaflet produced by Waterford County Council at a cost of €30,000, Mr Ó Cuív said the authority did so voluntarily. "It was not a question of compulsion."