Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 7 is a technical amendment. Amendment No. 16 proposes "A court or a public body, in compliance with its obligations under this Act, shall not engage the services of a person providing Irish Sign Language interpretation unless the person's competence has been verified by having been accredited in accordance with an accreditation scheme funded by the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection." This is a very important amendment that we have negotiated and agreed with the Government. It replaces a raft of sections about setting up a sign language council. It requires that only qualified sign language interpreters can be hired by the State. This follows discussions with the deaf community because even when interpreters brought into hospitals were not qualified or nearly fit to do the job, the State continued to employ them because it used an interpreting company for sign language and other languages and assumed that these people were qualified. Despite being presented with the fact that they were not qualified, it continued unfortunately to hire these people.We are trying to achieve a situation whereby there is an onus on public bodies to take only interpreters from an accredited service funded by the State. I thank the Minister, his advisers and the Department for reaching an agreement on what is a laborious and detailed section to ensure interpreters hired by the State are fit for purpose.