Mr. Daithí Ó Caigne:

The Government decision in 2013 was that we would seek to recruit people with proficiency in Irish through a competency and skill based model. The intention was that Departments would identify positions which required functional bilinguals in their workforce plans and we would seek to recruit such people either through promotion or through external recruitment. We would use the good offices of the Public Appointments Service in that regard. One of the supports my Department put in place with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht was an arrangement with Gaelchultúr Teoranta which provides Irish language training support, to be drawn upon by individual Departments as they saw fit. It was not up to us to determine that. That contract covers the Civil Service and the public service and is still extant. As I said in my opening statement, it expires in 2018.

Right now the Civil Service is rolling out a new learning and development module which is centrally driven by my Department. It is designed to meet the identified demands of other Departments. Two of the 70 modules which have currently been identified relate to the Irish language and will be rolled out in the first quarter of 2018. Gaelchultúr successfully tendered to provide those modules. We are currently evaluating the standard on offer, but we expect to be able to sign off on a training programme which will provide language training for Irish speakers up to and including honours Irish standard. The training module will be available to Departments but we cannot tell them to avail of it. We can tell them that it is there and we would expect them, as part of their own training needs analysis or recruitment process, to avail of it as and when it is necessary. The approach was designed in consultation with Departments who, through a business partner process, worked with my colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to identify the whole range of skills which needed learning and development interventions, one of which was the Irish language. As I said, we are currently evaluating the standard, but the indications are that there will not be an issue with the organisation, with which we are very familiar. I expect that training intervention will be available in the first quarter of 2018.