Mr. Peter Finnegan:

Perhaps I will take the staffing issue first. As I said, approximately 10% of our staff can deliver services in Irish. This year we recruited seven new staff members who are fluent in Irish and who have the ability to provide services bilingually. Our strategy for the future revolves around ensuring that core services that use Irish, such as Rannóg an Aistriúcháin, the Debates Office and the Committees Secretariat, have sufficient staff to be able to conduct business. After that, we are focusing on front-line services such as the ushers, the education services and things of that nature. That is the focus of our efforts.

The biggest challenge we have is actually getting staff with language skills. To illustrate the scale of this challenge I might explain the situation in respect of the recruitment of parliamentary reporters the last time around. We advertised for parliamentary reporters in 2017. We had 331 applications in total, of which 34 were applications for the bilingual option. Of these 34 applicants, 27 sat a simulation test, five of whom passed and proceeded on to the interview stage. At interview stage, four out of five passed and were placed on the panel. When job offers were made to those people, two out of the four did not actually take up the posts. Of the people who applied for the bilingual option, the pass rate was 12%. If one looks at it as a percentage of the overall number of applicants, 1% passed the test and were put on the panel. It is illustrative of the scale of the challenge that we face in recruiting staff.

In terms of some of the other issues, it could be the case that the booklet is just out of print. We will follow that up and ensure that booklet is published again. On the record of the meetings, is the Deputy talking about the debates?