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

Part of the reason for this proposal is the frustration of those who have tried to use Irish with the system. This came up in the Irish language committee when we were discussing planning in Gaeltacht areas. One of the questions we raised with the chief executive officers of the different councils that came before us was how many people in their planning sections had Irish. If I am in the city here, as an English speaker, I can seek a preplanning meeting. I can discuss things with officials in English and have all the applications in the same language. I am big enough and bold enough to understand, though, that it will be a long time before Dublin City Council will have people at the level required to have a full conversation of this type as Gaeilge.

Eight county councils, however, cover Gaeltacht areas, but I think only one council would have been able to have that level of engagement with an applicant in Irish. Part of the problem here is that the skill set is not in the councils. They have not sought to recruit in this regard. When they are recruiting, they are not looking to see if those they are recruiting have Irish at a functional level. I know there are problems in recruitment for local authorities. We are not denying this. People dealing with planning in the Gaeltacht areas, though, do have major problems, as indicated by all we said so far, and they need a leg up. This proposal is an attempt to ensure they will get this in the area of planning, at the very least.

It is not just an issue in the context of communications. That is the least of the problems. It is also the aspect of back-and-forth discussions sometimes and engagement with planners in Irish that is a problem. I refer to having to switch to English to find out what is the problem with a planning application or even with a proposal before it is possible to get to the stage of submitting a planning application. By the looks of it, the same will be true in the future unless we have the required protections in place. The Minister is quite correct in saying there are protections in the Official Languages Act 2003 and perhaps that is the correct place to have them. We do not want to end up in a situation, though, where most of the time of applicants for planning permission is spent dealing with An Coimisinéir Teanga or in the courts. The problem is that if a service is not provided, this is where these people will end up because the protections are not in place. These proposals are intended to encourage councils in these key areas, in particular, where there is engagement with the public to have people in place who have an Irish language skill set and a skill set concerning, in this case, planning, as well as an understanding of how to communicate this information in the language of the public.