Joe O'Toole (Independent)

A petitions committee established by the House would be impressed by the level of consultation by the group of people who spoke to us on child trafficking. I agree with the points made by Senator Brian Hayes in this respect. It is an example of how engagement with the public can work when legislation is proposed. I was sickened to hear how innocent young women from foreign countries are used, abused and drawn into the sex trade in our country and that we have no legislation to protect them.

My understanding on this matter differs from Senator Hayes in that we have signed the protocol but have not yet ratified it. In order to do so we must publish legislation or the heads of a Bill. I understand the difficulty in the former but I do not see difficulty in publishing the latter. If the Government was to do so it could ratify the protocol with the publication of the heads of the Bill. Perhaps the Leader can verify this. We cannot allow Ireland to be the destination of choice for those who seek to abuse, exploit and destroy young women's lives. It is wrong that we facilitate this by not publishing legislation.

Tá brón orm i gcónaí a bheith ag argóint agus ag cur i gcoinne na moltaí a thagann ón Aire Gnóthaí Pobail, Tuaithe agus Gaeltachta, ach tá deacracht agam le tairiscint Uimh. 1 inniu. De ghnáth, táim go mór i bhfábhar aidhmeanna an Aire agus an méid a iarrann sé a dhéanamh. An uair seo, tá sé ag brú rialacháin siar scornaí na daoine atá ina choinne. It is not doing the Irish language any good. I do not see any good in forcing bodies such as the Crisis Pregnancy Agency or the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to have their telephone answering systems in Irish as well as in English. I am concerned about this because a considerable body of influential people in this country are agnostic about the Irish language and do not have strong views on it one way or the other, and we are driving them into the corner against us.

I will support the Minister in trying to achieve the objectives of this set of regulations as long as we do it to mealladh as opposed to éigeantach. I do not want to force people and I believe we should try to convince them to do it. It is a good idea but putting pressure on organisations to change all their answering messages will simply mean that this issue will arise in board meetings in 500 different organisations and the boards will have to make a decision which will involve additional cost and inconvenience. Someone will say something negative about the Irish language during every one of those meetings and we will lose out.

We are very near the tipping point in terms of attitudes towards Gaeilge sa tír seo agus cuireann sé isteach go mór orm a bheith i gcoinne an Aire arís sa mhéid seo. Ba chóir go mbeimis ar aon-taobh sa rud seo ach nílimid. Ba mhaith liom díospóireacht ar an ábhar seo. Tá sé ag dul go dtí the joint committee but is probably as relevant to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service or the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business as it is to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.

This is the kind of thing that gives Irish a bad name. We passed legislation which required the same companies to bring forward their tuarascáil cheann bliana, their annual reports, as Gaeilge. We had to pay a considerable amount of money to get this done. Chuir mé glaoch ar an Government Publications Office ar an méid den aistriúchán den Budget Statement a ceannaíodh san office. It had not sold one of them. What are we doing? We should ask ourselves some hard questions.