Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe as a bheith linn agus as ucht na cuir i láthair. Ba mhaith liom díriú isteach, i dtosach báire, ar na sonraí ar chaiteachas ar chúrsaí Gaeilge.

I want to look at some of the Irish-language spending. In the first instance, it is very welcome that funding for the Irish language has largely recovered to pre-recession levels, as that was very badly needed. The language is on life support in some senses and it very much needs that extra funding if we are to make significant headway, in particular in regard to forwarding the 20-year strategy for the Irish language, which we are over halfway through at the moment.

It is a similar trend that we are seeing under a lot of the spending subheads, where we have had significant underspend. Looking at programme C, which covers the Gaeltacht, we had planned for a spend of €81 million and the underspend is €8 million, which is a substantial 10% underspend. That is the programme that covers things like Údarás na Gaeltachta, for example, to which I will return. There was also an underspend of €1 million on the Irish language strategy for the second year in a row. On a strategy that is so important and where funding was an issue for so long, people within the Irish-language community will not welcome the fact we did not manage to spend what we had hoped to spend on it.

I want to focus on Údarás na Gaeltachta. We had a lot of discussion on governance last week, in particular governance as it applies to the sporting bodies, and we had Sport Ireland before the committee. Údarás na Gaeltachta is another significant body that is answerable to the Department. I want to ask around the current arrangements and whether the Department is satisfied with the governance. It may be a little early in the process to ask this, but we know that legislation is being prepared with regard to the governance structures of Údarás na Gaeltachta, and it is still undergoing pre-legislative scrutiny. Will Ms Licken outline to the committee what prompted that legislation and what it is about the governance structures that we are trying to restructure by bringing through this legislation?