Ms Edel McGinley:

I will come at this slightly differently. If we believe people have a right to health, a right to legal redress and other fundamental rights, then we should be adding a layer that states that to access those rights, one must have a fundamental right to understand the services. This is the conversation we are having now. We need to get there. We need to determine what rights people need to understand. In fact, that is all rights. There are some basic and fundamental things that people need access to in a language they can understand.

Translation is low paid and not very attractive so there is an issue with attracting people into the profession. There are issues around pay and rights. There are also issues as to how it translates from a service. There are a number of issues to overcome in this area.

I am certainly not an expert on translation services but there are some basics that need to be hit. They are something the Department of Education really needs. The committee, in its function of examining equality and integration issues, needs to make demands on that Department to come up with some kind of framework in this area.