This is a Bill about which there ought not to be very much controversy, but I think it is preeminently a Bill about which there ought to have been consultation before it was drafted. I am unable, however, to find if there was any such consultation. For example, I do not know if the Minister consulted any member of the judiciary, any district justice, any county registrar, or any Irish language specialist. On the face of the Bill, I would think not, and the Bill itself, at first blush, appears to be trying to do something which, in fact, it could not do, although it may very well be that the way in which the Bill is worked will improve the situation. In fact, however, if you take the Bill on its face value, that is, that a committee—a rather extraordinary committee, it seems to me—is to sit down and frame Irish translations for English legal terms, that is a procedure that might take at least 20 years to accomplish anything, and even then it could only produce a very small result. Even if the committee could produce in that time proper Irish translations of legal terms, it would be still very difficult because, if anybody thinks that you can just take English words and translate them into Irish, thus getting the proper legal terms, it simply cannot be done. In order to translate an English legal term into Irish, you would have to have the whole context before you, and there is no such thing as just taking English words and putting Irish words beside them and saying: "This is the word to be used."
Quite properly, Section 3 of the Bill provides that—
"whenever the Minister makes a legal terms Order declaring that the equivalent in the Irish language of a specified term shall be the word or words specified in the Order, then the said word or words shall, unless the contrary intention appears, be construed as having the same meaning as, and have the same force and effect as, the said specified term."
In other words, no matter what kind of imprimatur the Minister gives to particular terms, the judges will still have the power to construe them as they please. That is quite natural, and it would be fantastic if the Minister were to try any other scheme but that. However, I think that is not the way in which it will be done, and I take it that it will not be, because there is already a very considerable body of translations of various Orders and legal enactments. What, I take it, will be done is that the vocabulary of official terms hitherto used by the official Translators will be furnished to the committee, and they will be asked to go through it. I take it that that is the intention because, if there is any other intention, it seems to me to be cracked.
It will be appropriate in this connection to mention the work already done with regard to getting a legal terminology in the Irish language. It was very fortunate that, in 1922, when the Oireachtas was being set up, we had the services of the then Clerk of the Dáil, the late Colm O Murchadha. He was a very accomplished Irish scholar; he was a man of tact, and a man who had the gift of being able to get others to work willingly with him. He had scholarship, patience and thoroughness, and he also had what a great many scholars lack: a practical capacity to get particular things done. Now, the translation of all Government documents was centralised in the Translation Department of the Oireachtas, in Leinster House, at that time, and a very determined effort was made to equip the translation staff with the very best people available. Those who were transferred from the old Dáil were, without exception, Munstermen. The Munster man was prominent and dominant in Dublin at that time. Through the instrumentality of the Professor of Irish in University College, Galway, a Connaught man, who has since been seconded to another Department, was got. A Donegal man, a teacher in Dublin, was taken in in order to provide the Donegal dialect. A number of other people like Liam O Rinn, who died recently, were taken in. Although he was a Dublin man he had an extraordinary knowledge of Irish and a great experience of translation.
The staff was further recruited for the Department in a manner which rent the heart of the Department of Finance. Special steps were taken and special salaries offered. Very early an officer of that translation staff was directed to prepare a vocabulary. I take it that the vocabulary is still being prepared and I hope it will be made available. It seems to me that before this Bill was offered to us, and certainly before this committee can go into action, that particular vocabulary should be available. The procedure was that a Bill was passed in English and was then translated into Irish. The only exception is alleged to be the present Constitution. That, of course is humbug. The Constitution was framed in English and translated into Irish. The only competent body was not, in fact, the body that did it. It was handed over to another body. I do not exactly know who they were. The document on the face of it shows that they were not always in agreement. They produced what is a very unsatisfactory document. Then the extraordinary step was taken of making the Irish, which is really a translation, and not a very good translation, the document which was valid in law. When it was seen that the thing was not satisfactory, an effort was made to bring the translation staff to the rescue. That did not prove completely satisfactory either. Recently a new copy of the Constitution has been issued in Roman script with a new standard spelling.
The success of this Bill will turn entirely upon how it is worked. I cannot believe that the Attorney-General could possibly entertain the view that you can put down a list of English terms and then go and put down a list of Irish terms instead of them. You could not do that. All you could do is to examine the translations over a period and adopt the terms in them. If there are discrepancies, and there have been discrepancies, the committee can correct the discrepancies, but you must examine the terms in their full context. You would have to put your imprimatur not on particular words but on whole texts. At the present moment there is a law suit in progress which turns upon Irish words used in a contract drawn up in Irish. Two specialists have already given evidence. I do not want to go into the merits of the case, but I want to indicate that the words that are causing all the trouble are not legal terms. They are very common words and the question is, what do they mean when combined with a particular preposition? You cannot possibly discuss words by themselves. It seems to me all that can be done now is to take the work that has been done by the Translation Department, to put it before the committee, and to take steps to see whether it can be adopted and whether there are any discrepancies which would need correction. When that is done certain progress will have been made.
As I am on this particular point now, and will not have an opportunity of dealing with it again, I may say that to those of us who read the Irish on the Order Papers there has been obviously in recent times tinkering with the spelling. I am a tolerant person with regard to Irish spelling. I am not particularly enthusiastic for a particular system, but I do feel that you ought to have a system, and if the official Translation Department is adopting a new system of spelling we ought to be told what it is. A simplified system was adopted subsequent to 1922. I do not know whether members of this House are aware that there are people who would be willing to go before a firing squad for the silent g in the middle of the Riaghaltas. I am not one of them, far from it. One of the things that happened in 1932 was that Riaghaltas was spelt with a g and the change-over of Government was indicated by putting in the g and a number of silent d's.