The Deputy will recall that officials from my Department appeared in July before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Irish Language, Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking Community. The Committee examined in some detail the recruitment of Irish speakers to the civil service in the context of the ambitious 2030 recruitment targets set out in the Official Languages (Amendment) Bill that is presently before the Houses of the Oireachtas and against the July 2019 audit findings of An Coimisinéir Teanga that highlighted that only c. 0.4% of total positions were presently designated by civil service employers as positions having an Irish language proficiency requirement.
It is clear that the achievement of a 20% recruitment target of proficient Irish speakers by 2030 will require a cross-Government approach. On enactment of the Bill presently before the Oireachtas, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media will establish an Advisory Committee on Irish languages services. The functions of this Advisory Committee are set out in the Bill and include the publication of a national plan to increase the provision of services through the medium of Irish that will likely require the consideration of approaches to the future recruitment of Irish speakers in the coming years. The Public Appointments Service, as the principal recruiter for the civil and public service, and my Department will be represented as members on this broader Committee once it has been established.
In the context of actions assigned to my Department under the current Irish Language Action Plan, my Department continues to authorise competitions to attract applications from fluent Irish speakers to specialist positions and to general service posts across the civil service. Irish language training courses continued to be made available to all existing civil servants via OneLearning, which is the Learning and Development Shared Services Centre for the civil service that is based in my Department. OneLearning is at an advanced stage of finalising the procurement of an expanded range of Irish Language training courses from 2022, that will include the introduction of a beginner’s Irish course.
