Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 11 July 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Appropriation Account 2018

9:00 am

Mr. Peter Finnegan:

Correct. I refer to the Ó Murchú case, which was settled around Christmas time. As part of the settlement, we committed to eliminating arrears over a five-year period and ensuring that all Acts are translated effectively on a current basis. We recognise that it would take us time to put in place the resources to do this and we have been doing that in recent months. It is not easy because there are a lot of very attractive options available to translators out there. I refer to jobs in Europe, etc. The other issue we are contending with is that for legislative translation we require an exceptionally high standard of Irish. We are undertaking recruitment. As part of that process we are looking at options if we cannot get people recruited through the normal means, so we will look at issues-----