Mr. Peter Finnegan:

There are a number of ways to tackle this. One of the ways as identified by the Senator is links to the third level institutions. Building those relationships with the Irish departments in universities across the country is something that we will have to work on going forward. Hopefully, those people will then come in on a short-term internships during the course of their studies. They may like what they see within the Houses of the Oireachtas and may look favourably on the Houses as a possible career.

The second thing which Mr. Uíbh Eachach touched upon during his earlier contribution is the opportunities that Covid-19 presents to us. I always felt that one of the things that we should be exploring is the possibility of a regional office or offices for Irish because there is a pool of talent in Gaeltacht areas in particular parts of the country, whether that is in Galway, Kerry or Donegal, where we could recruit staff and who would be interested in working for the Oireachtas if they are able to stay in their local areas.

In a sense, we have moved now beyond that with Covid-19 which has given us the opportunity for people to work remotely and all of the policy in Government and in the public sector is to encourage remote working. Going forward, that opens up very significant possibilities for us as an institution.

My concern originally with the regional offices was just to get a critical mass of people in one centre and I was thinking in terms of the office of an Coimisinéir Teanga in Spiddal where we might rent out some office space and there might be a critical mass there. We do not need to do that now as we have the technology and can run Microsoft Teams meetings with staff members. We have proven that we can operate very successfully remotely and there is no reason why that cannot be done on a long-term basis with Rannóg an Aistriúcháin.