Mr. Donncha Ó Súilleabháin:

More than 40 people have volunteered to be able to provide functional bilingual services to the public. We have an awareness that there was a larger hinterland of people who are comfortable with bits of the language in a casual sense. We do a lot of cultural work around the Irish language in the Department and that tells us there is a great interest in the language in the Department. I mentioned in my opening remarks the events we have around Seachtain na Gaeilge, and hundreds of people attend some of those events. However, when somebody is put on the spot and asked if they are willing to deal with a potentially complex matter involving someone's personal affairs, some people will answer that they are not quite there yet.

We find that number to be adequate for the demands on our services. This may be coming back to the point made earlier that our Department is largely concerned with policy, governance, legislation and so on. It does not provide a great deal of direct services, so we find the number of people we have who are willing to provide those services is adequate. We are not turning anybody away, we are not failing to answer any letters, and if something needs to be translated, it gets done.

We would like to grow the number of people we have who are willing to provide services through Irish and we would like to refresh it because we always have new people coming into the Department. Sometimes those people will put up their hands when they come into the Department and say they are ready to work in Irish, and other times they might need a little bit of mentoring, they might need to go on a course, or maybe Mr. Ó Cearúil or one of the more experienced members of staff will need to work with them. We would like to grow that number, but the key point is it is not hindering our service provision.