John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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70. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will provide a breakdown of his Department's expenditure in translating and printing Irish language publications, documents, advertisements, notices and bilingual signage in each of the past three years. [11047/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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A breakdown of expenditure on Irish language translation, advertising and signage costs is set out in the following tables. This information has been extracted from my Department's Financial Management System and provides costs for the years in question wherever it is possible to disaggregate costs relating specifically to the Irish language from overall expenditure within these cost categories.

It is a requirement of the Official Languages Act that documents setting out public policy proposals, annual reports, statements of strategy, and matters considered to be of major public importance, are printed in both Irish and

English. Given this Act, and the obligations under the Education Act to promote bilingualism, to promote Irish as a community language in Gaeltacht areas, and to provide support services through Irish to schools, it is the general policy of the Department to print many publications in both Irish and English. The Deputy should note that that the figures in the accompanying table for printing expenditure represent the total cost of printing for these years as it is not possible to identify the costs of Irish language printing separately.