Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

That is another really good question. If the committee had time, it would be great for its voice to be heard on this issue also. First, we should encourage people to apply to work in the European institutions. That is very important. The Department gives a lot of support to people so if the Senator knows of people who want to work in the European institutions, they can contact the Department, which will help them to get through the process.

There are a number of difficulties. Part of it is that the process is extremely long. The other issue is language ability. It is certainly a problem for Ireland. It is an advantage for some countries where people are just better at languages, to be frank. Irish is now an official language and if two languages are needed, English and Irish will work. Three languages would be needed for promotion. It is not the cúpla focal. I speak Irish at Council meetings. A very technical level of Irish is needed to be able to function in these jobs as required. Recently, there was a call-out for what are called lawyer linguists. It was essentially for people from Ireland, the UK before Brexit and Malta. The EU was seeking common lawyers with language skills. The language skills the EU wanted were native English, a second language at C1 level, which is basically native speaking, and the a third language at B2 level, which is business working language ability. I thought that was very strict. I made the point to somebody that I thought it was too much and that the third language could probably be picked up when someone was on the job if they had some level in the language beforehand. I was contradicted in strong terms by an Irish member of staff who told me the lawyer linguists need three languages at a high level. We do not have a large number of people who have those skills and could apply for those jobs. Do we know how many Irish people applied?