Report criticises Irish language services

Significant breaches of legislation aimed at promoting the Irish language were detected during the past year, with a number of Government departments guilty of not making state services available through Irish.

According to the Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga's annual report, which was published today, for the second successive year more than 600 new complaints were made to An Coimisinéir Teanga, Seán Ó Cuirreáin, by members of the public concerning difficulties in accessing state services through Irish during 2007.

Overall, there have been nearly 2,000 complaints made since the establishment of the Office in 2004.

Formal investigations during 2007 by An Coimisinéir Teanga found that provisions of legislation were breached by a significant number of Government departments and other state bodies, including the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, An Garda Síochána, the Health Service Executive, the State Examinations Commission, the National Disability Authority, Bus Éireann, and Fingal County Council.

One-third of all complaints made last year came from Dublin while 40 per cent came from Gaeltacht areas.

An investigation carried out by the Coimisinéir Teanga found that the Department of Education has no Irish-language version of syllabuses available for 27 subjects on the Junior and Leaving Certificate courses.

The annual report also reveals that a second investigation concerning compliance with a statutory requirement was discontinued when access to relevant files from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law reform was refused because they related to decisions and proceedings of the government.

Speaking at the launch of the report today, Mr Ó Cuirreáin said that the current recruitment and training regime in the state sector appeared to be insufficient to ensure that an adequate number of staff were competent in the Irish language so as to be able to provide services through Irish as well as English.

"I am not at all making the case for a return to compulsory Irish for state employees but I do believe that a policy of compulsory English is not adequate either when members of the public deal with state bodies," said Ó Cuirreáin.

He suggested that a "rebalancing" action may be required to ensure an adequacy of staff with competence in Irish in the civil and public service.

"A system to help achieve cross-community rebalancing through positive discrimination was found for the Police Service of Northern Ireland as a result of the Patten report. A similar effort would be required here, even temporarily, to have a positive effect in rebalancing staffing levels in the state sector of those with competence in Irish and in English.

"Such a move should have no additional cost implications; in fact, it would be more economical for the state sector to employ people with competence in both Irish and English than the current system, which in many state organisations requires resorting to external commercial translation agencies to deal with the simplest of letters in Irish," he concluded.