John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When I was a transport operator, I used to fill out those forms. I found a few ingenious ways of ticking boxes but they were not really accurate and I was never happy with the fact that those boxes were ticked. It may not have been just my form that might skew the position because others might have been doing the same thing. If they were, they were trying to comply and work with the CSO. We need to simplify the forms as much as possible. This week, one of the national newspapers reported that each Department is recruiting an individual to unravel what they call the gobbledygook English that can come out of a Department. This new person to be employed in each Department is to provide it for the public in layman's English. The same should apply to these forms. The questions may come from Europe but some of the questions from Europe are for that big, broad market. We should urge the use of common sense and a bit of directness in the questions.