Mr. Patrick Smyth:

I will start with the second question on foster parents. As time has gone on, it has become increasingly difficult for Tusla to recruit foster parents across the whole spectrum, regardless of language proficiency. That has certainly been much more pronounced in urban areas. The closer one gets to Dublin, the harder it is to recruit foster parents. However, the example of Galway-Roscommon would be quite strong in the numbers of foster parents that they have. In that area there are a number of foster parents that I am aware of who have proficiency in Irish. It depends on the part of the country one is looking at. On the western seaboard, it has always been a bit easier to get access to foster parents. As the economy has improved and available time has reduced, we have found it much more difficult to recruit foster parents in the eastern part of the country. The Deputy's point is correct. It is certainly a problem if children who have a proficiency in Irish are with foster parents who are non-Irish-speaking. I am not aware of it being a major challenge but we can check this out and come back to the Deputy with some detail on that.

On the first question, on the assessment of child protection issues if the child's first language is Irish, I will ask my colleague, Mr. Noel Kelly, to give some insight on that and what we can do in those areas from a schools or educational welfare perspective.