Ms Margaret McCabe:

There is huge competition for any of those jobs in Brussels, particularly in the area of the aistritheoir.

The pay is obviously much better in Brussels so we struggle there a little bit. As regards the standard and level of Irish, it is hard to say. We have not done any research into the levels coming through but we have separated out all our general grade competitions from the English competitions. There are separate competitions for people who are applying through Irish because people were ticking both boxes, saying that they could do Irish and English, but they could not do the Irish at all. It is a struggle. We do not use tests for the clerical grades any more. That is purely based on interview. People will be interviewed through Irish. It is a pretty straightforward way of coming in. The fact that some people are better at the spoken language than the written language could work in their favour. However, you do need to have a good level. You need to be able to write in the language as well as speak it. I imagine that COGG would have some idea as to the difference between levels in Gaelscoileanna and scoileanna Béarla.