Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

In reply to the first question regarding correspondence in Irish received in my Department, several members of staff can deal with such correspondence. However, we do not have people in every section in the Department who can do so. Such correspondence is dealt with on a departmental basis, which is not perfect. We would like to get to a situation — we include the Secretary General and most of the senior staff who have very good Irish, both oral and written — over the period up to 2008 where we would have a competent person in each section so that people who do not normally deal with correspondence in, for example, the EU division, the economic division or the Northern Ireland division, no longer have to do so. That is the challenge. We are not in that position today but the challenge is to get there. It will probably take approximately three years to achieve that.

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