Mr. Doncha O'Sullivan:

I do not have any personal recollection of it myself but from reviewing the papers there were a series of reports over a number of years looking at how to better structure the promotion competition within An Garda Síochána. A great deal of research was done around that. From my review of it, that does not include a huge analysis of the language question. By its absence, I think the process was identifying what is needed to identify whether supervisors could be good at their job and what skills and competencies were needed. In that work, having a slightly better Irish language skills than those needed to become a garda in the first place was not identified as a need. That said, we recognise what the Deputy has said about the need for those skills in some parts of the country and there is a separate track for that. I cannot point to any particular research on the subject of the language per se but the decision was a consequence of the core analysis of the supervisory competencies required for this role. Similar changes have been made to the promotion process for the more senior ranks, although I am not aware that there was ever an Irish language requirement for those ranks. There certainly is not now. Again, there are similar promotion competitions around the public service generally. Other than where there is a very specific job that clearly requires Irish on some regular basis, I am not aware of other promotion competitions in which we require somebody to demonstrate a language skill alongside the general competencies for the supervisory role.