Mr. Paul Fay:

I will address some of that and the Secretary General may come in then. The two posts we are recruiting are specifically highlighted in the action plan. They are mentioned because that are designed to be co-ordinator posts. What we find is that we have 30 sitting county childcare committees operating throughout the country to support early years service provision and there is a level of support trí Ghaeilge in most of them. Obviously it is stronger in the Gaeltacht areas than further outside. They are independent companies which operate like this. There are pockets of good practice going on. There are services which are doing things on their own and there are initiatives going on in learning institutions through training and support. It is not centrally co-ordinated and it is not brought together and there is no sharing of the learning. The two specific posts we are talking about are designed to identify good practice and to give us the base line and then to start building on that.

I should have mentioned earlier that the early years' specific group under the action plan will have two purposes. It will monitor the 14 early years' actions we have but it will also be seeking opportunities to increase the use of Irish throughout the country in and outside the Gaeltacht. Preliminarily this will be outside because our colleagues in the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht are responsible primarily for inside the Gaeltacht. These are the two posts.

The Deputy had a further question on general Civil Service recruitment which I might leave to the Secretary General and to the question on increasing the number of staff with Irish.

I will address the last point made by the Deputy on the 228 naíonraí. They are actually self-declared naíonraí. As to examinations and whether we are we looking after the standard of Irish, no we are not. They are subject to the early years regulations that everyone is subject to, and to Tusla and education-focused inspections. Pobal inspects them for compliance with scheme rules etc. They are independent companies that are self-declared to us as naíonraí.