Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

While I understand the arguments regarding the second amendment, the argument relating to the first amendment does not take account of what I said earlier, namely, that the Long Title of the 2003 Act has the opposite formulation to what is the current common usage. The Long Title puts the Irish language title in the primary position rather than it being an afterthought. In doing that, the House would be telling the public that this is the first title of a body. I have made this argument on a number of occasions but I have never got a logical answer. I get the same response each time but, as I said earlier, the then Minister, when establishing the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, or Coimisiún Tithe an Oireachtais, accepted my arguments. At the very least, in this Bill we should continue the logic behind accepting that in the first instance. Once it follows the English title it does not come into common usage, for example, CIE, Coras Iompair Éireann. Bord Soláthar Leictreachas is now known as ESB but for many years it was BSL. An Post is another example. There is a number of bodies set up by the State whose primary title, even if it is abbreviated with capital letters, is in Irish in the first place.

In the past 20 years or so the State seems to have moved towards giving primacy to the English language title in all its new institutions or boards. For example, NAMA is now the common word rather than NUBS, which would be the Irish abbreviation of the title. That is one that comes to mind but there are others. If we accept that the Irish language is the first official language according to the Constitution, even though we have altered that slightly, all bodies set up by the State should be in that primary language. I will not pursue the issue beyond that.

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