Mr. Alan Breen:

I want to tell Deputy Ó Snodaigh that, like the other corporate services within Tusla, communications was playing catch-up to a degree. We will take our team from three to 14, it is hoped by the end of February, because we are cognisant of the fact that we have in excess of 4,000 employees at more than 400 locations around the country delivering a full suite of services in child protection and welfare. One of the priorities is to put the strategy in place. We have a communications strategy, part of which is directly related to our obligations under the Irish language legislation. In the context of conducting a communications baseline audit, in our internal communications service and workshops, two of which we have conducted already, we have been looking to ascertain if we can identify additional proficient Irish speakers. Obviously some training comes with that. If, as is the case with any large organisation, we are identifying spokespersons to speak with some degree of authority on a particular area, they will need training and some of them will sometimes be speaking on areas on which they need to be brought up to speed. It certainly is a priority for us in 2019 to ensure that we have identified more spokespersons with a view to having them available to deal with broadcast media such as Raidió na Life, Raidió na Gaeltachta and TG4.