Mr. Peter Finnegan:

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I thank the members of the committee for inviting me here today. It has been a few years since I have been in, and over the course of that time we have made progress as an organisation in a variety of areas. We are in a better position than we were a number of years ago in the usage of Irish in the Oireachtas. We are on a journey that will take a considerable period of time, but the language scheme is very much about incremental improvements, which is what we are about. There is no shortage of commitment on our part to the promotion of Irish within the Oireachtas, which we have tried to do over recent years. The next stage in the process is to have a look at what comes back from the study we will be doing on bilingualism to see what we can take from that to advance the Oireachtas as a bilingual working environment.

I thank the joint committee also for the work it is doing. One of the things it is doing for us is to push us, which is good. We talked about targets earlier. The joint committee itself has raised both expectations and the requirement for an Irish standard, which is to its great credit. It is up to us now to try to deliver on that as a parliamentary service.

On my own behalf and on behalf of my colleagues, Mr. Uíbh Eachach, Ms Gunn, Ms Crawley and other colleagues in the service, our commitment is to work with the joint committee over the coming years to develop the whole concept of bilingualism, to create an atmosphere in the Oireachtas where Irish is welcomed and where the love we all have for the language can be fostered, and to enable those of us who have lost our language skills to get them back, we hope, in the years ahead. A very sincere thank you to everybody for their time and courtesy today and I wish the joint committee well over the coming months with its work.