Dr. Fergal Lynch:

We recruited those two staff members last year. We have facilitated and continue to facilitate Irish training and staff also have their own informal caife le Ghaeilge once a fortnight. We will continue our efforts to encourage and support the use of Irish in the Department, trying to encourage an Irish language friendly atmosphere throughout.

On the early years segment, we are strongly committed to supporting the provision of services in Irish to children at an early age. We fund some 228 services which identify themselves as naíonraí, both within and outside Gaeltacht areas and about €16 million was invested in same over the last four years.

At a practical level, we have an early years forum to advise the Minister on all aspects of early years and we have allocated two places for Irish language stakeholders as well as having a specific subgroup of the forum from time to time for promoting Irish medium early childhood services. We also have six staff members from Better Start, which is the quality initiative within Pobal, who are proficient in Irish. They have provided support for about 135 naíonraí in the quality context and have provided support for our access and inclusion model for children with special needs.

We are very supportive of the five year action plan for the Irish language which was produced by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and we have committed to a set of important actions under the action plan in the early years area. These include providing information and supports for parents raising children through Irish and we are about to create two new Irish language posts next year, one in non-Gaeltacht areas and one for quality under Better Start. The job specifications have been finalised and the funding is in place for 2019.

We will participate fully in the overall monitoring of the five year action plan and we will also have our own specific group, which we will lead, to monitor the specific commitments in the early years sector.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach, with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, launched a major early years strategy called First Five, which is for babies, young children and families. This is a milestone policy for early years and it contains two actions that are specifically aimed at supporting the development of the Irish language within the early years sector. One is to ensure that children in Gaeltacht areas have access to Irish-medium early learning and care and the second is to develop mechanisms to provide the Irish language supports where there are a significant number of children learning through Irish. There will be an implementation plan for all of the actions in the strategy within six months.

There are many other aspects to the supports that we can and should be providing. I hope that my summary and the opening statement will have provided a reasonable overview to the committee of the Department's work in this area. Tá dul chun cinn réasúnta maith déanta againn ach tuigim go bhfuil tuilleadh le déanamh. Bheinn sásta ceisteanna an choiste a fhreagairt agus tuairimí na mball a chloisteáil.