Mr. David Cagney:

Absolutely and as I indicated, the Civil Service is now in the process of developing an action plan to support its next ten-year renewal strategy. A key component of that action plan is the recognition of the targets that will be set out in this Bill, assuming it is passed, which I have no doubt it will be. In the manner of the Civil Service renewal process, Civil Service Renewal 2030, the expectation is that cross-Department and cross-office there will be an action plan which will identify where the key levers are in creating that awareness and desire that the Senator has just referred to. Clearly, as I said earlier, the aim is to then target people at decision points in their careers.

The other thing, taking on board the Senator’s point, is that we have in a sense a captive audience of 41,000 civil servants. The indication is that from looking at the take-up of opportunities in our OneLearning Civil Service training initiative, there seems to be an increasing desire on the part of civil servants for their own developmental purposes to pursue learning and training in the Irish language. There are therefore a number of opportunities which we hope to leverage in the context of our ten-year plan.