I propose to take Questions Nos. 188 and 189 together.
As the Deputy is aware, the Official Languages Act 2003 is the first piece of legislation to provide a statutory framework for the delivery of public services through the Irish language and its primary objective is to ensure better availability and a higher standard of such services.
Clearly, full implementation of the Act will require us to draw on the language competencies of significant numbers of people across both the public and private sectors. As I have already informed the Deputy in reply to Question No. 334 of 1 October 2003, it was in this context that reference was made to an estimate of up to 2,000 such persons. I reiterate that I did not, at any time, indicate that an additional 2,000 jobs will be created in the public sector as a consequence of the legislation. It was in the context of the inaccuracy in the newspaper article of 14 November 2004 referred to by the Deputy, which stated that "the Government will have to employ an extra 2,000 fluent Irish speakers at a cost of over €100 million a year" and that translation costs arising from the Act would be to up to €150 million per year, that I used the terms "fantasy" and "nonsense" in my response.
I make the point again that the public service in Ireland has a total staff complement of approximately 280,121 people. Within this, a complement of 2,000 people with a competence in Irish, as referred to above, would represent less than 1% of the public service. It may be anticipated that employment will also be created in training, translating and so on, outside the public service.