Ms Anne Marie McMahon:

This is very much a work in progress and the work is not complete. There are many steps, however, that have been taken and I have outlined the development of the strategy which will be the cornerstone of how we progress, develop and achieve our statutory obligations on the proficiency of all Garda members and those who are serving in the Gaeltacht areas. I would point to that as one of the key pieces of work that has been achieved since the most recent visit of the Commissioner here.

In addition to that, it is important to point out that one of the key recommendations - and this has happened since last May - of An Coimisinéir Teanga was the establishment of an assessment within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages whereby we could stand over the actual standard of Irish. That was developed in 2018 but the assessment was conducted with all of those serving in the Gaeltacht stations in 2020. That is a significant step in having an organisational picture of the standard of Irish available to the public in the Gaeltacht areas.

In addition, we have identified 60 stations we would call Gaeltacht service stations. They are not in the Gaeltacht but are used by people in the Gaeltacht areas. We aim to increase the proficiency of Irish in those areas as well.

There is not a clean sentence, if I can put it that way, in terms of whether we are achieving all our milestones. We are working very hard on them and are committed to continue this work. The fact the Commissioner is chairing the strategic group is an indication of his commitment to the Irish language and the very robust statutory obligations with which we have to comply. It is not an easy fix. We have the Irish language stream, which did not yield the results we would have liked, but there is also work for us to ensure all those who come through the Irish stream go to the Gaeltacht stations. We very much need to keep that work on the clár.

Our recruitment campaign will be launched next week which will have an Irish stream. We will engage in extensive outreach across the board in terms of that campaign but the Irish stream will be a particular focus. We have numerous ads. Some of our Gaeilgeoir colleagues will hold information sessions and there is an extensive outreach programme in the hope we attract as many people as possible who are able to speak the language fluently.

Later on this year, we will have a reserve competition that will, for the first time, as far as I am aware, focus on attracting reserve candidates from the Gaeltacht areas by using that outreach initiative. There are many moving parts and work going on, but we have a hill to climb and there is no getting away from that.