Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Any waste of money is wrong. If money is wasted on printing, it does not matter whether the material being printed is in Irish or in English. I have complained in this House on many occasions about the number of unsolicited reports, etc., that are sent to my office. Most of them are in English only. They go immediately into my waste paper basket because I know I will not get a chance to read them. There are too many of them. Like everyone who checks his or her post, I can remember a time when every county enterprise board sent its annual report to me. I do not get any of those any more. The debate we have had on this issue has helped enormously to dissuade bodies from sending this type of documentation to us, in either of the official languages. All of us know that if we want to access a report, we can get it on the Internet. This is not a language-specific issue - it should be addressed as a waste issue. The document referred to by Deputy O'Shea had a particularly fancy cover. We have said time and again that all these issues should be examined. The number of documents that have to be translated is quite limited. I estimate that 90% of the cost of preparing documents involves preparing them and just 10% of the cost relates to translating them. The vast majority of documents in this country are produced, quite legally, in English only. I agree it is about time we cut down on the size and number of documents that are produced. Documents are eating up huge sums of money.

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