Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

179. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his views on Irish language-specific recruitment panels and the poor rates of appointment from these panels to full-time civil service posts; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44419/22]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will be aware, the Official Languages (Amendment) Act 2021 was enacted on 22 December last. It underpins a key Programme for Government commitment and it is notable that this coincides with Irish having become a full working language of the EU Institutions since January.

From submissions made to the Oireachtas Committee on the Irish Language, Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking Community, the achievement of an ambitious 20% recruitment target of proficient Irish speakers by 2030 requires a cross-Government approach.This is against a backdrop whereby only 0.4% of posts are designated currently by civil service employers as being Irish-speaking posts.

The Act provides that within 6 months of the date of enactment, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media shall establish an Irish Languages Services Advisory Committee. Accordingly, Minister Martin and Minister of State Chambers established this Committee in June of this year. My Department is represented on this Committee at Principal Officer level and the Public Appointments Service (PAS) is similarly represented at the Committee. The committee is chaired by the Director of Irish at the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

The functions of this Committee are set out in the Act and include the preparation of a National Plan, within two years of its establishment, to increase the provision of services through the medium of Irish as well periodic surveying of the number of Irish speakers employed by the public service.

Some of the actions that my Department and PAS are already taking to increase the number of fluent Irish speakers in the civil service include:

- Dedicated recruitment and promotion competitions targeted at Irish language speakers:Since the summer of 2021, PAS has held general civil service competitions for individuals with fluency in Irish at Clerical Officer, Executive Officer, Higher Executive Officer and Principal Officer level.The outturn of these competitions reflects that the number of fluent Irish speakers applying to join the civil service, or otherwise declaring a fluency in Irish, remains low.

I am advised by PAS that since the enactment of the Official Languages (Amendment) Act 2021, a total of 44 candidates have been assigned to date from panels established from recruitment competitions - from Clerical Officer to Principal Officer level - where fluency in Irish was required for the post in question and for which proficiency in Irish was tested as part of the PAS assessment process.

Additionally, to the end of June 2022 PAS has assigned 101 candidates from competitions to posts where Irish was not identified by the hiring employer as a prerequisite for the post in question and where the candidate declared as part of their application that they had fluency in Irish. Their proficiency in Irish was not, however, tested as part of the PAS assessment process.

It is possible that some Departments or Government Officers may also have recruited fluent speakers directly under their local recruitment licence instead of PAS.

- Irish language training in the Civil Service: Along with the recruitment of staff with sufficient Irish language skills, the provision of Irish language training for the Civil Service is of particular importance, in order to enhance the linguistic abilities of current civil servants. OneLearning, the Learning and Development Centre for the Civil Service, was set up in 2017 and is responsible for delivering common training to all Civil Service Bodies (CSBs).

Irish language training courses continue to be made available to all existing Civil Servants via OneLearning - the Learning and Development Centre for the Civil Service based in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Since 2018, 1,454 civil servants have enrolled on an Irish language training course through OneLearning. 470 enrolments of these enrolments were in 2021 and 179 to date in 2022.

OneLearning signed a new contract for the provision of Irish language training in 2021 and is currently rolling out an expanded range of Irish Language training courses that will include the introduction of a Beginner’s Irish course, the first term of these courses will commence in September 2022. The Irish Language courses will be certified by Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge (TEG), which is administered by the Centre for Irish Language at Maynooth University. It is a comprehensive, graded system that allows learners to undertake examinations at five different levels of proficiency. The various levels in TEG are broadly based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching and Assessment (Council of Europe, 2001).