Mr. Paul Hogan:

With regard to taking guidelines into account, we published development plan guidelines last August which are just about to be finalised. We had a period of public consultation on those after that and have taken on board advice given to us. That guidance will address many other things and all the mandatory objectives development plans are supposed to include, including those for the Gaeltacht.

Most local authorities are at various stages of their development plan processes and there is never a perfect time to bring out guidance, simply because the cycle goes on continuously. It is open to all local authorities to vary their plan to take on board what they may be at odds with, if that is an issue. By and large, they will not be in the vast majority of cases and a degree of transition is taken into account, where it may not have been possible to do that.

With regard to the point about native speakers and people from inside or outside particular areas, whatever guidance we offer more specifically on the Gaeltacht will have to be fair and apply equally. We will take advice from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, as well, as to whether that matter could or should be addressed.

Broadly, in planning terms, it is difficult. If one has a particular requirement for a public policy reason, which we would say here, I am not sure one can discriminate within that between different places of origin, if people comply with the spoken language requirement.

One of the problems has been there has not been a consistently agreed test. That would be a real breakthrough for us in providing guidance, because there would be a standard to which all eight local authorities could seek to apply. Certainly, looking at the eight different development plans now, there is no agreed test. That would be significant development to move things forward for people and offer more certainty to those who wish to continue to live in Gaeltacht areas.

The target set for increasing the population of people who speak Irish on a daily basis in Gaeltacht areas is important because it gives a certain level of policy support to that objective for development plans.