Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Interpretation can be an interesting thing. I have worked through interpreters in the past, face to face and over the phone. There are times when the person you are working with talks for five minutes and the interpreter gives a one-word answer. It is not always the best. An accreditation scheme would be excellent. One question I wanted to ask that has been pre-empted is whether any other countries are doing accreditation right. Dr. Skuce mentioned England. I agree with Senator Seery Kearney that this is not a new issue for us in terms of multiculturalism but as we are coming to it after other countries, surely we can learn lessons from them. Can our guests point to other examples of positive things?

I am curious about structural issues with interpreters. Do we have enough interpreters in this country? Do we have enough people who can speak the right languages? I have worked with interpreters over the phone and it not the best but it is not the worst and it is certainly better than not having interpreters. Can we not use a pool of interpreters sitting in the UK, Brexit notwithstanding, or in France? Perhaps these are questions I should be asking the Department. I would like an insight into the structural issues around the set-up of the interpreting services. Are there other places we can learn from in terms of accreditation? Do we have enough interpreters speaking the right languages?

Where a parent does not have any English and his or her child has better English, the child can often be pulled in as an informal interpreter, which can be unfair and problematic as it can be an inappropriate level of responsibility for the child. There can also be implications relating to the privacy of the parent.

Ms Alagha mentioned policy relating to multicultural sensitivity and awareness within the HSE. I missed the name of the policy, if she would give it again. I am curious as to what that policy looks like. Is it aimed at the hospital at large? If it is, it is probably gathering dust in the office of the hospital administrator or manager. Is there something on the ward? Nurses and doctors have all sorts of reference books to which they can turn for correct administration of medication and things like that. Surely it would be easy to require them to have a folder which tells them about basic cultural awareness. I appreciate that basic cultural awareness, by definition, is basic and will not meet everyone's needs but it is certainly better than nothing. It is better than getting the person to try to explain themselves.