Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The third question I will put to the Minister is something we have spoken about before. He referred to horizon planning. I have spoken about the Acht na dteangacha and the fact that it has very ambitious targets for recruitment into the public service, whereby 20% of new entrants from 2030 are supposed to have a certain required level of Irish. An Coimisinéir Teanga has spoken about the fact that if we are serious about achieving those targets we should be considering putting on a level 8 public services course that is done through Irish. Maynooth University is doing very good work setting out the teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge, TEG, which is the common European framework, for the Irish language. I would like to see that being rolled out to more locations so that more people place themselves on the common European framework as a matter of course, as is the case with French, Spanish, German or whatever other language in order that we can easily compare and contrast the level of Gaeilge people have so that we can be serious about the targets set out in the Acht Teanga. Is this something that is appearing on the horizon as the Minister scans it? Is the Department looking at the need for us to engage in Irish language training? There is a huge issue with teacher training but I refer in particular to public services in order to hit the targets that are set out in legislation?