Mr. Daithí Ó Caigne:

In our Department, the demand for proficiency in Irish is low. Those are the statistics that are in front of me. The determination of the requirement of proficiency in Irish in other Departments is a matter for those other Departments. It is up to us, in partnership with the Public Appointments Service, to ensure that we can recruit to meet that demand and beyond due to an overarching objective of being quite inclusive. We are satisfied that we can satisfy the existing demand for proficiency in Irish subject to the one or two exceptions I mentioned earlier where a particularly high proficiency is required. I cannot say how the demand is assessed in other Departments. I have some indication of how it is assessed in our own Department which is largely by the demand for the services. I cannot speak for the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, the Revenue Commissioners or other organisations, however. They assess their own demand via their own workforce planning forces.