Dr. Fergal Lynch:

Beidh orm Béarla a labhairt. The committee has received my opening statement. Rather than reading it in its entirety, I will highlight a few points from it. There are two parts to the statement, the first of which deals with support for the Irish language within the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the second of which deals with Irish language services in early years settings.

I would like to begin by referring to our response to the questionnaire of February 2017.

I acknowledge and apologise that our response was rather minimalist at the time and it did not offer the committee a full picture of the various measures that we were taking. We have recently submitted an updated and expanded version of the questionnaire which I hope the committee will find more informative. Since completing the original questionnaire we have undertaken a good deal of work to increase the supports and the services provided in Irish by the Department and this was informed by a review of the Department's language scheme undertaken by an Coimisinéir Teanga in 2017.

We have acted on an Coimisinéir Teanga's recommendations following his review of the Irish language scheme and I will summarise some of those points. Some 20% of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs' press releases this year were provided simultaneously in Irish, compared to the 10% promised in the Irish language scheme. We launched a new website recently and we have considerably increased the number of pages translated into Irish on same. About 52% of all the pages are in both languages.

We do not have a high level of direct contact with the general public through Irish but we are committed to supporting the availability of Irish to the public. We have six officials in the Department, ranging from service officer level to principal officer level who are fluent in Irish and can engage with the public through Irish. We have recruited-----