Mr. Guy Mahon:

I agree with what the Deputy is saying about Gaeltacht areas and the Department agrees. What we are giving priority to at present is being able to provide Irish language services in Gaeltacht areas. That is our pragmatic approach. As I was saying earlier, we have two offices in Gaeltacht areas. We have one office in Daingean Uí Chúis and one office in Ros an Mhíl. We have 13 staff there and ten of them can conduct business fully in Irish and three have conversational Irish.

On correspondence, if somebody writes to the Department in Irish, they will be responded to in Irish. If somebody rings the Department in Irish, we have a list of people who can conduct business as Gaeilge and we will facilitate that. On inspections, as we pointed out earlier, we have designated posts with Irish language speakers and we will do our very best. In many cases, as was mentioned earlier, when ringing a farmer in a Gaeltacht area, we proactively conduct the preliminary call as Gaeilge. We cannot categorically say it is done-----