Mr. Paul Reid:

I can respond, first, to that question. I am disappointed to hear about the woman with the medical card, in particular, because we have in our Primary Care Reimbursement Service, PCRS, centre in Finglas in north Dublin dedicated people who support the processing of medical cards in Irish so I am quite happy to take that case up separately for the Cathaoirleach. We have some dedicated focus there to support those applications as Gaeilge.

Specifically on what we are going to do and as I mentioned in my opening statement, from our perspective we are working closely with the Department. First, we will appoint someone at a senior level to support the services in respect of raising our game and our communications in respect of the Irish language. We also want to strengthen the interface with an Coimisinéir Teanga in getting good advice from that office about who how we can improve this. We want to put in supports for both the community and acute services as they communicate outwards and do so directly themselves in many communications. We plan to put certain training in place at all stages to promote the Irish language where people will be encouraged to take up Irish-language courses.

The provision of the Irish language on our website and in all of our communications is something that we are going to strengthen further. As I said my opening statement, we now have 108 pages but we want to ensure that we have an equivalence also.

Those are some of the actions, Cathaoirleach, that we are setting out to do and if it is okay I will ask my colleague, Mark Brennock, to add to this on some of the actions that we plan to take, unless the Department wishes to contribute separately before him.