Mr. Pádraig Love:

I will try to address the questions the Senator has raised. First, it is not our function to examine the overall standards of the Irish language. However, if a Department perceives that it has a need - either from its own research or from comments from An Coimisinéir Teanga on the performance against its scheme - we will be quite happy to introduce a competition which would favour people with the Irish language, and have done so on many occasions over the years. The last time we had a competition which was specifically focused on people with competence in Irish was in 2007 for executive officers and clerical officers. Unfortunately, the response from applicants with that competence was low. We had about 113 applicants for the executive officer position, of which only about 68 came to sit tests. With regard to the clerical officer position, there were 126 applicants and only about 60 came to sit tests. There is therefore an issue that is wider than just the immediate Civil Service, because they were national competitions which would have been publicised through our website.

As regards the demand for Irish and how it is being fulfilled, we would not have a role in specifically identifying that. We are fully in compliance with our scheme in relation to meeting the Irish and English requirements of people who wish to apply for Civil Service posts. It would be fair to say, however, that despite the efforts we have made, of those candidates who have an actual registered identity on our website, only 0.62% of those have expressed an interest in doing their transactions through Irish.

Of those who have applied for competitions over the past three years, only 0.26% of all applications we have received have been done on that basis. That is with full backing, so there are issues regarding the level of demand that would manifest itself, certainly for ourselves, although I am not quite sure about other Departments.

As regards the PSNI, we would not be averse to having a scheme which would foster or encourage people with Irish to apply. It would have to be done in the context of them meeting the overall standards in relation to all the posts. In the course of our recruitment, we also look after professional posts, including medical consultants and engineers. The Irish scheme equally applies to them in recruiting for posts. Clearly, however, a medical consultant has to meet the medical requirements and cannot be brought over that hurdle by their competence in Irish. So that tension is there all the time - that one is trying to get the best people in. There is no direct conflict between people with or without Irish in terms of meeting those competencies. Obviously, there are some people who may have Irish who will not clear all the hurdles that are required to get in.