Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Let us consider the case of County Clare. I understand the local authority translated the county development plan into Irish and printed English and Irish-language versions. Great play was made of the fact that nobody bought the Irish-language version, but the county council does not have a record of how many hits the Internet page received. I asked my officials to check the numbers involved and was told that 190 copies of the English-language versions of the three plans had been bought over a four to five-year period, at a cost of €50 each. This equates to an average of 18 copies a year. It is obvious that people are downloading the documents, in Irish and English, from the Internet. Any sensible person would do this. In other words, nobody is buying them in any language. There are probably hundreds of copies of the English-language county plan, produced at enormous cost, lying around Clare County Council because people did not buy it when they could get it from the Internet.

The Deputy's colleague, Councillor Joe Arkins, put it well when he said that spending on the Irish language by county councils should occur not only during the good times but also in times of recession. Another Fine Gael councillor, Johnny Flynn, said the cost of translating the documents was 10 cent per resident of County Clare. There is money to be saved-----

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