Ms Elaine Gunn:

I thank the Deputy. She mentioned Rannóg and I want to pay tribute to the work of Rannóg an Aistriúcháin. It does very good work and has a fantastic, specialised team. I will start with the numbers because, ultimately, with the court cases and the litigation we have had, it is about the capacity to translate the sheer volume of legislation we have. Currently, there are 28.7 full-time equivalents in Rannóg an Aistriúcháin, but of that there are 22.7 specialist staff. They are the translators and editors. The pressure is on the editorial side and that specialist work. The translations are all broadly done. The pressure is on that high skill set which involves checking, terminology and all of that stuff to get the Acts published.

In terms of the High Court action that was taken against us and settled in 2018, we undertook to clear that arrears backlog in a five-year period. There were 511 Acts outstanding at that point between 1992 and 2018. We put in a lot of effort in terms of recruitment. Over that period, we have run 18 recruitment campaigns but unfortunately, we have only managed to add minimally to our numbers. We were at approximately 19.5 at the start of that period in 2019 and we have grown the translation and editorial staff to approximately 22.7, meaning we have added approximately three people. There is a lot of turnover there. We are competing with the European institutions. It is very challenging for us but even at that, with a lot of effort and focus on the team, we managed to publish 50% of those arrears. It was a good effort and it continues. The challenge is that legislation keeps getting passed so even since 2018 until 2025, we have added another 285 Acts since that judgment. However, just under 50% of those have been published.

We are making progress. If we had more numbers - we commissioned a PwC review of Rannóg which underpinned the five-year plan. The plan was to get us up to approximately 38 of a headcount and we just have not succeeded with those 19 recruitment processes. It is still a good story. The progress that has been made has been fantastic. We have focused on how do we manage because arrears are with us. We are now focused on having a prioritisation strategy. What Rannóg is doing now is focusing very much on where the demand is. We are publishing on a demand-led basis, which is taking up all of the capacity. There are a lot of requests received from State bodies and members of the public. Ultimately, that is where the value added is. Hopefully, over time and once we get the numbers up, which we hope to do, we will then work on the overall cohort.