Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What I am saying is that while people applying for the Irish language stream can speak Irish, they also speak English as well as any of us. My contention is that while it should be noted that candidates have both Irish and English, they should not be excluded from jobs that only require English, because they are just as able to do those general grade jobs as those who just speak English.

People do not want to be pigeonholed all of the time into a corner by virtue of the fact that they have an extra thing. As I said, it is not like Belgium where there are people who speak Flemish but do not speak French and vice versa.In our case, every Irish speaker can speak English perfectly. In fact, many of them have better English than those people who do not have Irish.