Dr. Ciar?n Seoighe:

Tá cúpla focal eile agam le cur leis sin chomh maith. Tá brón orm nach bhfuil an Ghaeilge agam chomh líofacht is a bhí. With regard to the Deputy's question on Irish in preschools, I am not sure if it was his submission, but it has definitely shown up in the feedback we go from the voice of the public, in that it has been suggested by a couple of individuals that we could do better by having a basis that everybody gets. One puts children into that environment, they get the Irish and it is in there for life.

With regard to journeys in Irish, my education was all through Irish. I was educated through Irish in primary and secondary schools, up until university. At that point, one of the challenges is in the technical and business worlds is that the lingua franca is effectively English. There is quite a challenge. Having learned all one's technical and science terms and everything else through Irish, moving into the university, switching to English and re-learning many of the terms and language can be a challenge in that journey.

Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, when we look at other funding agencies, sees we are not alone as a country in the challenges faced in keeping languages active and alive in these environments, because many other countries are also dealing with the fact that the scientific community, the peer review and international papers and publications are predominantly done through English. That will always be a challenge.

However, we talked earlier on about digital enablement and keeping the language relevant and alive. The digital opportunity we talked about has also come across. The public say to us that there is really an opportunity to bring the language to life and give the opportunities from an early stage. Those are the three things we talked about. It needs to be in the rethinking the education system; in what happens outside of education, from sports to social life in general and taking cognisance of the digital opportunity that the new tools and capabilities are giving us these days.