Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom Ceisteanna Uimh. 103 and 123 a fhreagairt le chéile. Mar is eol don Teachta, tá spriocanna nua earcaíochta in Acht na dTeangacha Oifigiúla (Leasú) 2021. Chun na spriocanna seo a bhaint amach, tá ar gach Roinn sa Rialtas comhoibriú le chéile. This is against a backdrop, in line with the July 2019 audit findings of an Coimisinéir Teanga, whereby only 0.4% of posts are designated currently by Civil Service employers as being Irish-speaking posts.

The Act provides that within six months of the date of enactment, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media shall establish an Irish language services advisory committee. I understand that the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, is finalising the establishment of this committee. My Department shall be represented on this committee at principal officer level and I understand that the Public Appointments Service, PAS, has similarly nominated a principal officer to the committee. The functions of this committee are set out in the Act and include the preparation of a national plan, within two years of its establishment, to increase the provision of services through the medium of Irish as well periodic surveying of the number of Irish speakers employed by the public service. The work of this committee may include consideration of approaches to the future recruitment of Irish speakers.

Some of the actions that my Department and PAS are already taking to increase the number of fluent Irish speakers in the Civil Service include dedicated recruitment and promotion competitions targeted at Irish language speakers. Since last summer, PAS has held general Civil Service competitions for individuals with fluency in Irish at clerical officer, executive officer, higher executive officer and principal officer levels. The outturn of these competitions reflects that the number of fluent Irish speakers applying to join the Civil Service, or otherwise declaring a fluency in Irish, remains low. Another action being taken is to have Irish language training for existing civil servants. In addition to new hires, Irish language training courses continue to be made available to all existing civil servants via OneLearning, the learning and development centre for the Civil Service based in my Department. Close to 500 such enrolments for such courses took place in 2021, with a further 200 enrolments to date in 2022.

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