Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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451. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the percentage of posts made on each of his Departmental social media accounts and platforms that were exclusively in Irish between 1 May 2020 and 30 April 2021, inclusive; the percentage of posts made on each of his Departmental social media accounts and platforms that featured bilingual translations in Irish and English between 1 May 2020 and 30 April 2021, inclusive; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26576/21]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department takes every opportunity possible in its day-to-day interactions with customers to promote and publicise the services it provides through Irish. These include the Department’s website where all static content is bilingual.

The Department’s corporate documents are available in both English and Irish as follows:-

- Annual Report

- Strategy Statement

- Customer Service Action Plan

- Customer Charter

- Section 15 & 16 Reference Books (under Freedom of Information Acts)

My Department has exceeded the issue of 20% of press releases per annum in Irish at the same time as the English version as per our commitment under the Official Language Scheme.

My Department also has a pool of Irish speakers available and a number of training initiatives are ongoing.

Twitter is the only social media platform where my Department has a presence and in this regard there are three Twitter accounts in use by my Department.  These include those of the Civil Defence and the Office of Emergency Planning with the Department of Defence Twitter account being launched in July 2020.

The percentage of posts which were exclusively in Irish up to 30 April 2021 was 0.5%.

The total percentage of posts made across my Departmental social media accounts and platforms that featured bilingual translations was 3%.

As content is not static on this platform, communications are predominantly in English, with approx. 3% being bilingual or as Gaeilge. My Communications Branch is reviewing opportunities to increase bilingual and Irish content on this platform going forward.