Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the announcement of the increase in the number of labour inspectors to 90 in the partnership talks. The Minister should have done this some time ago, but well done, nevertheless. I have a couple of questions arising from that. How soon will recruitment begin? Will it be pretty much immediately? Is he talking about the end of 2007 in terms of completion of the recruiting and training process?

In terms of the number, will the Minister give some indication as to how he arrived at the figure of 90? Did he adopt a particular model or what device did he employ to arrive at the figure? Was it simply a matter of horse-trading among the partnership talks participants, with an arbitrary figure being agreed on? Finally, is language a feature of the new inspectorate? Will some of the inspectors come from the prominent immigrant countries such as Poland and Latvia, or at least will some be required to have a competency in the languages of those majority immigrant countries?

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