Mr. Peter Finnegan:

I might address the numbers of staff in the Houses who are in a position to do business in Irish because I know the Deputy mentioned the number of Deputies and party staff. Out of a staff complement of approximately 500 we have 54 staff who advise us that they are able and willing to do business through Irish. We are in a more fortunate position than other organisations because we obviously have Rannóg an Aistriúcháin, which has 23 staff. Outside of Rannóg an Aistriúcháin there are 31 other staff who can do business in Irish. They are right across the organisation from the Debates Office to the committee secretariat. We have staff in our Communications Unit and the five ushers in the Superintendent's section.

A number of our legal people are fluent in Irish. We have someone in our Parliamentary Budget Office and in the Library and Research Service. We have some coverage in most of the organisation in respect of conducting business in Irish. We feel that is important because it provides Members and other people with the opportunity to use Irish. It may be on a limited basis, but they can still do so.

In terms of the translation system, the first thing to say is that we are in the process of upgrading it. For a long time only committee room 4 was equipped for simultaneous translation. That was obviously quite limiting. With the growth in the use of the Irish language, we felt that we needed to upgrade our committee rooms. Last summer we upgraded committee room 3. We would have done all four but for the fact that we were moving the Seanad Chamber, which caused a capacity issue. We are going to upgrade committee rooms 1 and 2 this coming summer. That means that all four rooms will have the capacity to host meetings in Irish.

That brings us to the question on the other side of putting in place the resources to translate proceedings. Obviously, if four meetings are going ahead and all are using Irish-----