Mr. Daithí Ó Caigne:

We need to recognise that, no more than any other public service bodies, the Civil Service is coming out of a period when there was no recruitment. In the past number of years, there has therefore been a surge in recruitment. We would freely admit that we have been a lot more reactive than we would like to have been. We would like to be a lot more strategic. We have developed and are in the process of rolling out a people strategy for the Civil Service. This places a particular focus on workforce planning, not just on an annual basis but over a three year period. We want to see Departments and offices identifying what they believe will be the proficiency requirement over the rolling three years. The reason is that we think it will enhance our ability to recruit what are termed functional bilinguals. That is the term in the documentation I have seen. One of our problems is that we do not market the Civil Service as effectively as we should. We are in a better position to indicate over a three year horizon the possibilities that are available if individuals wish to have a career as Gaeilge. It is anecdotal but I am aware from my own personal experience that, for example, a lot of fluent Irish speakers see national school teaching as an option before they will even consider the Civil Service. We are trying to change that image by having a more bespoke approach to recruitment based on a rolling three year workforce plan.