Written answers
Tuesday, 21 September 2021
Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht
Oireachtas Committees
Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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243. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if her attention has been drawn to the Report of the Joint Committee on the Irish Language, Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking Community entitled Tuarascáil an Chomhchoiste ar Thuarascáil an Choimisinéir Teanga: Maidir le cur I bhfeidhm Moltaí Imscrúdaithe a rinneadh faoi Fho-Alt 21(f) d’Acht na dTeangacha Oifigiúla, 2003 – An Garda Síochána; her views on the report; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44821/21]
Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The matter of appointments or assignments of Gardaí to Gaeltacht areas is specifically covered under the provisions of the Garda Síochána Act 2005. Section 33(2) of the Act states:
- The Garda Commissioner shall, to the extent practicable, ensure that members of the Garda Síochána stationed in a district that includes a Gaeltacht area are sufficiently competent in the Irish language to enable them to use it with facility in carrying out their duties.
Compliance with this provision is a matter which the Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga has been monitoring since 2011, when an investigation by An Coimisinéir Teanga made the following recommendations:
- That the Garda Commissioner take every necessary step to ensure that Gardaí competent in Irish are deployed to Gaeltacht stations.
-That the finding and recommendations of the investigation are not to be used as an excuse to reduce or slow the provision of an appropriate policing service for the area in question.
- That An Garda Síochána implement an appropriate language testing system to assess the Irish language fluency of members when it is proposed that they may be stationed in a district with a Gaeltacht area, and
- That An Garda Síochána examine if there were implications from the decision of this investigation in relation to all the districts of An Garda Síochána with Gaeltacht areas and, if there were, that these be addressed to ensure compliance with the statutory language obligations.
Details of An Coimisinéir Teanga’s ongoing monitoring of the implementation of these recommendations can be found in his most recent Monitoring Report (2019) which was published in August of 2020. A copy of this can be accessed here .
While the responsibility for monitoring the implementation of the Official Languages Act 2003 and other relevant legislation comes under the specific remit of the Office of An Choimisinéara Teanga, I am, as one would expect, keen to see this matter reach a satisfactory conclusion – bearing in mind, in particular, what we are trying to achieve with the proposed Official Languages (Amendment) Bill 2019 and the introduction of challenging targets for the recruitment of Irish-speakers to the public service.
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