Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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219. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in view of the recent findings by the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht that there is a lack of staff with sufficient competence in Irish to meet the requirements to deliver services through Irish, the steps that are being taken across the Civil Service to rectify this; if there is an indicative timeframe by which actions are to be taken; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1753/15]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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As the Deputy is aware, in October 2013 the Government approved the introduction of a new approach to ensure that there are a sufficient number of civil servants who are able to perform their duties through Irish.  These new arrangements were put in place in the context of replacing the policy of awarding bonus marks for Irish language proficiency in civil service recruitment and promotion competitions which was not meeting the Government's objectives.

Under the new approach measures are being introduced to increase the cohort of functional bilinguals in the civil service in order to reflect a more competency-based approach to recruitment and, where appropriate, promotion competitions.

In future, in the context of workforce planning frameworks, Departments will be required to identify the posts/areas of work requiring functional bilinguals and to include these in their workforce action plans. Having regard to the implementation of the Gaeltacht Act 2012, Departments will be asked to pay particular attention to posts that are located in, or that are serving, Gaeltacht areas. This process will be central to ensuring that future recruitment and interdepartmental promotion competitions run by PAS make sufficient provision for appointments to posts requiring functional bilinguals. In the case of Departmental recruitment and promotion competitions, an assessment will be made of the requirement for functional bilinguals and, where necessary and appropriate, a sub-panel of functional bilinguals will be put in place.

The new arrangements replace the scheme of bonus marks for Irish, introduced nearly 40 years ago following the abolition of compulsory Irish for entry to the civil service.Under the new arrangements, where a post in a Government Departments is identified as requiring proficiency in Irish, the intention is that it should be filled by a functional bilingual.

The new arrangements are part of the Executive Officer (EO) recruitment competition for which applications closed on 8 January 2015. The new arrangements have also been incorporated into the ongoing Clerical Officer (CO) recruitment competition. Stage 2 of the CO process is nearing completion. Those who expressed a preference to be tested in Irish will now move on to oral and written tests which will test their abilities in the Irish language.

It is intended that a sub-panel of Irish language functional bilinguals comprising up to 6% of the overall panel size, will be created in both competitions subject to a sufficient number of candidates meeting the required standard.

The operation of the new arrangements in these competitions will be reviewed and will be revised as necessary in the context of experience and progress in achieving the Government's objectives.