Ms Rachael Murphy:

I am delighted the Deputy brought up the question about Gaeilge. One of the advantages of being in the Department of education is that it commissioned and last week launched a strategy about the use of Irish. Included in that is youth work which is fantastic to see. Just recently we have created three projects in Mayo and Kerry which are purely through Irish. In addition to that, as a result of our engagement with the Department of education on its strategy, we are looking to promote the Irish language through our everyday youth work activities so that it is not just in school but it is all these other fun ways of using and learning Irish.

The Deputy is dead right about the Kneecap strategy. I have to tell the story about two young lads in a youth diversion project in Donegal who would not be fond of school. They approached our youth worker and said, "Can we not do this through Irish?" We need to capitalise on that and ensure that Irish becomes a working language. We are also linking with small Irish-speaking organisations to see how we can learn from them in the promotion of the language by weaving it into the everyday.