Mr. John Howlin:

I will just pick up on a couple of points Ms McCabe made. Part of the work the committee is undertaking is a baseline exercise, which is supported by the University of Galway, to determine the level of Irish-language speakers across the civil and public service. As the Deputy may be aware, Irish speakers are occasionally reluctant to identify themselves for fear of being pigeonholed. In looking to meet and exceed the target, it is important to understand the level we are working from.

There could be a number of factors. We have looked at this from a number of different perspectives for the groups we want to target. In some cases, it is quite simply that Irish speakers do not consider a job in the Civil Service. The PAS is reaching out at school level in a number of different ways and through various activities. I mentioned the apprenticeship model, which has been developed to reach out to Irish-language speakers to give them the support they might need where they may not have the other skills and experience. The aim is to develop those skills to bring such people into the Civil Service. In some instances, it is a question of breaking down barriers. A significant challenge for us is the number of Iris speakers who will be applying for this. It is a matter of the attractiveness of the positions and the recruitment pool itself. There is work to be done on having people coming out with a good level of Irish and being able to apply for these jobs. A number of different factors need to be looked at and are being looked at.