Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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57. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to provide an update on the progress of the national plan for the Irish language in the public service; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [67895/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The National Plan for Irish Language Public Services 2024-2030 is an ambitious and strategic 6-year plan. It is the first ever Plan of its kind in the history of the State and a central element in the move towards a fully bilingual public service under the Official Languages Acts 2003 and 2021.

Overall responsibility for the preparation of this Plan fell to the Irish Language Services Advisory Committee, established under the Act, with a range of organisations from across the public sector represented at a senior level participating.

This National Plan, which is based on five specific strategic themes, is intended to act as a roadmap for public bodies in terms of systematically increasing and improving the number and quality of Irish language public services that they provide as well as the number of staff competent in Irish they have available to provide such services - in line with the Act’s overarching recruitment target that 20% of recruits to public bodies will be competent in Irish by 31 December 2030.

The National Plan is to be supported by two action plans, which will set out the specific actions to be undertaken towards achieving the Plan’s high-level strategic objectives. Work has been underway since the publication of the National Plan on the first of these Action Plans and, following extensive consultation and engagement across Government and beyond, It is intended to submit this Action Plan to Government shortly.

For further information on progress to date, the Deputy may be interested to note that the National Plan identifies the progress reports to be prepared annually by the Advisory Committee under the Act as being the primary monitoring mechanism for the Plan. These reports are submitted to the Minister and An Coimisinéir Teanga, with An Coimisinéir Teanga in turn submitting a commentary on said reports to the Minister. Both the report and the commentary are then laid before each House of the Oireachtas. Additionally, the Minister also prepares his own annual report on the implementation of the Act in general, which is also laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. The most recent of all of the above-mentioned reports can, accordingly, be found on the website of the Houses of the Oireachtas.