Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister’s proposal to engage on this. I am not sure where is the best place to insert the amendment, whether it is in section 34 or in this section and I will reflect on that. It is important that this new aspect be covered. As the Minister said, the Bill has been in gestation for quite a long time, as had the Official Languages Act (Amendment) 2021, but it managed to get through the hoop a great deal more quickly and it has very significant implications for every aspect of public service. I have reflected that and have had a number of meetings with different Departments, as Chairman of Comhchoiste na Gaeilge, na Gaeltachta agus Phobal Labhartha na Gaeilge, in trying to make those Departments aware of their, in some cases, onerous responsibilities now within a very tight timeframe, and the fact that the world has moved on. The EU recognition jumped ahead of the Irish language in some cases and gave greater status and now, all of a sudden, we have to deal with that to ensure it is reflected here, which is good.

Amendment No. 39, which I did not mention but which I will move, deals with the fact that the current system does not capture the numbers who are in full-time Irish language courses. The system has some information and states that there are so many engaged, as stated in answers I received back to parliamentary questions I raised recently in preparation for this Bill. I was surprised, however, at these figures.

They were not inaccurate, but they were not full. They were not complete figures that were usable for anybody. It gave lists of students who had courses in which there might have been an element of Irish language rather than an Irish-language course. We do not know the true figure but it is approximately 2,000 if one takes even courses that have a small portion of Irish tuition in them. That is a big drop from the number of 16,000 going through schools. Obviously, they are at different levels in secondary school. I cannot remember the figure for primary schools although it is higher again and, thankfully, growing each year. However, it means that there is a challenge for any institution, particularly the údarás, into the future. If we capture it now, the planning can start for ten years hence so the courses will be available for the children who are in primary school now and coming through in the future.

That said, I have no problem withdrawing the amendments and working with the Minister to see if we can capture what we tried to do in these amendments in a Report Stage amendment.