Vol. 694 No. 4
60 Deputy Seán Barrett asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on whether the funding spent on translating official documents into Irish would be better spent on reviving the Irish language in view of the current economic climate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41611/09]
64 Deputy Mary Upton asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his proposals to obtain savings in the operation of the Official Languages Act 2003; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41650/09]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 60 and 64 together.
I wish to assure the Deputies, and the House, that my Department has and will continue to work with Departments and other public bodies to assist them in meeting their obligations under the Act in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible. I reiterate that the obligation under section 10 of the Act to publish documents simultaneously in Irish and English applies only to a limited number of key documents published by public bodies, including annual reports and accounts and documents setting out public policy proposals.
I have long advocated that documents such as these should be published by way of CDs or the Internet, rather than in hard copy. I am aware that a number of public bodies already follow this practice. The Coimisinéir Teanga specifically advocates this approach to public bodies in the guidebook on the Act published by his office circulated to all bodies in 2008. The Government adopted a similar policy last year as one of a number of measures designed to reduce costs across public bodies.
With regard to the issue of whether the level of funding spent on translating official documents into Irish would be better spent on reviving the Irish language, I believe that given the constitutional position of the Irish language and its application in the Ó Beoláin case of 2001, it would be a mistake to think there is a choice between implementing the Act — with consequent costs — and not implementing it. The Act provides a planning mechanism by which constitutional obligations can be met over time in a planned and coherent way. The alternative is an ad hoc approach, in which public bodies respond in a fragmentary and crisis management way to perhaps much more prescriptive judicial orders. Given its position as the first constitutional language, the objective of the Act is to ensure that delivery of public services by public bodies through the Irish language is seen as normal and as being required to meet minimum standards of customer service and corporate governance, rather than an optional extra or add-on. The provision of public services in Irish so that the citizen has the option of engaging in official business with State bodies through Irish, is essential to the future of the language.
Last year the State and the local authorities spent €1.8 million on translation of documents. In the past six years, €6 million has been spent on the translation of documents. It is Fine Gael's view that this money could be better spent on the Irish language. It is like the film "Lost in Translation". This is what is happening — they are lost in translation.
I put it to the Minister that it is now time for a review of the Act itself. The Minister says he is telling local authorities and State agencies that putting information on their websites will do, rather then printing out all the documents. We cannot afford another €1.8 million next year. When there is talk of cutting the home help service, charging for medical cards and cutting services at hospitals, we cannot afford to spend €1.8 million translating documents that nobody wants.
The Minister is attending tomorrow's meeting of the Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. Can we hear a review of the Act? Will the Minister agree at least to tell local authorities and State agencies they do not need to spend so much money? They should put documents up on their websites for people to download, which will cover their obligations under the Act. Will he issue a ministerial order, once and for all, telling them to do this?
I am all for saving money. We are all for saving money where money should be saved. However, if we have a first constitutional language, there are certain obligations involved to the users of that language.
We cannot afford it any more.
It is not a question of affording it. As I have pointed out, there is a constitutional obligation. If the Deputy believes we can no longer afford the Irish language——
No, I am not saying that. We cannot afford the translation.
The Deputy mentioned specifically the translation of local authority plans. As I said before, we do not see any need to produce hard copies. However, it is interesting to consider the case of County Clare.
Then why are they doing so?
Please allow the Minister to continue.
Let us consider the case of County Clare. I understand the local authority translated the county development plan into Irish and printed English and Irish-language versions. Great play was made of the fact that nobody bought the Irish-language version, but the county council does not have a record of how many hits the Internet page received. I asked my officials to check the numbers involved and was told that 190 copies of the English-language versions of the three plans had been bought over a four to five-year period, at a cost of €50 each. This equates to an average of 18 copies a year. It is obvious that people are downloading the documents, in Irish and English, from the Internet. Any sensible person would do this. In other words, nobody is buying them in any language. There are probably hundreds of copies of the English-language county plan, produced at enormous cost, lying around Clare County Council because people did not buy it when they could get it from the Internet.
The Deputy's colleague, Councillor Joe Arkins, put it well when he said that spending on the Irish language by county councils should occur not only during the good times but also in times of recession. Another Fine Gael councillor, Johnny Flynn, said the cost of translating the documents was 10 cent per resident of County Clare. There is money to be saved——
We cannot afford it.
We will discuss this in great detail at tomorrow's committee meeting. I will be able to prove that the translation of documents into Irish is saving the State considerable amounts of money, and I will bring a small level of physical evidence in with me to prove my point. It is saving funds.
I ask the Minister to conclude as Deputy O'Shea wishes to contribute.
I find it mind-boggling to imagine that the translation of documents into Irish is saving the State funds. If the Minister can apply that economic principle to all State spending there will be no need for a €4 billion cutback.
No; there will be.
The arguments being presented by the Minister are legalistic. What we all want to see is greater use of the Irish language. That is the real issue. To be translating documents into Irish that, by the Minister's own admission, few people are reading even in English——
I did not say that.
One hundred and ninety copies were bought.
Is the Deputy saying the county plan——
If the Minister would allow Deputies to put their questions and confine himself to answering them, we would make great progress.
I agree but it is very frustrating.
He is preparing for Opposition, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
I ask the Deputy to put his question.
Is the Minister saying the expenditure on translating documents that are not read by a significant number of people — and whose Irish versions are not read to any significant degree even on the Internet — is justified in contrast to other, more productive spending which would promote the use of the Irish language?
That is correct.
I must clarify that I never said or intended to convey the idea that nobody read the Clare county plan or that people were not using it every day. I imagine that if one looked at the number of hits for the county plan on the website one would see it was one of the most used documents, in Irish and English, to be found anywhere. County plans are working documents that are used every day. What I said was that there were few people stupid enough to pay €50 for a document they can get free from the Internet.
We will, I hope, have a detailed and rational debate about this tomorrow. When we were framing the Bill and debating it in the House, we discussed the balance between the right of the citizen to use the first official language in communicating with the State and the cost of producing documents. We tried to take a middle road, that is, that certain basic documents would be seen as a fundamental right of the citizen.
The question of usage is a vexed one when we are talking about rights. We know that habitual Irish speakers are a minority. If we say a document should not be published because many people would not use it, this has mind-boggling implications for a whole set of minority rights. When we are dealing with minorities, the numbers will always be much lower. We must tease out the question of whether minorities — particularly in this case, as the minority is using the first official language of the State — have some rights to basic documents in Irish and, if so, which documents. As the Deputy knows, I am open to debate.
I would like to bring in Deputy McGinley, if the Minister will allow.
Is the Minister aware that on Report Stage of the National Asset Management Agency Bill, under amendment No. 223 in the name of the Minister, section 7 of the Official Languages Act was set aside? We will not immediately have a translation of that Act into the first official language.
As a member of Cabinet, I am aware of that. I understand the reason is that translation in the House comes under the remit of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, but it was not in a position to ensure the Irish-language version would be ready when the Bill was signed by the President. The problem arising is that under section 7 of the Official Languages Act, the Bill is not enacted until versions in the two languages are available. The Houses of the Oireachtas is dealing with the matter and I have no doubt it will get full co-operation from the relevant Department.
I must further point out that, separately from the Official Languages Act, there is a constitutional obligation to translate all Acts of the Oireachtas into the Irish language. The Act states that the Irish version of an Act should be produced at the same time as the English version, which is to protect us against constitutional challenge in the courts. That is the difficulty.
61 Deputy Tom Sheahan asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs how persons benefited from the limited application period for the community supports for older people scheme in October 2009; when this scheme will be reopened as promised; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41556/09]
71 Deputy Ruairí Quinn asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs the uptake of the recently closed community supports for older people scheme; the number of applications received; his plans to open this grant again in 2010; if he has plans to develop the support offered under this grant; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41636/09]
325 Deputy Michael Ring asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs the number of persons that benefited from the limited application period for the community supports for older people scheme in October 2009; when this scheme will be reopened as promised; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41716/09]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 61, 71 and 325 together.
Deputies will be aware that I suspended funding for the scheme of community supports for older people earlier this year pending the completion of a comprehensive review of its operations by my Department. That review is now completed and is being considered. Pending the establishment of new arrangements, I lifted the suspension at the end of September to afford community groups the opportunity to apply for funding for equipment, particularly monitored personal alarms and monitored smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. However, requests for other items of security equipment are being funded in the usual manner.
In order to facilitate the installation of equipment before Christmas, groups were advised that applications received before 21 October would be given priority. The scheme continues to receive applications and my Department will process as many as possible so that the funds provided can be fully drawn down by community groups to allow for the timely installation of equipment.
At the end of last week, some 300 applications had been received. Of these, 93 applications to the value of €240,000 have been approved and are either paid or in the process of being paid. These funds will provide equipment for 822 older persons. I estimate that applications in respect of a further 1,800 older men and women will be funded in the coming month. Applications received prior to the suspension of the scheme in respect of 3,695 older men and women were funded earlier this year. In total, some €1.5 million has been approved to date in respect of equipment for approximately 4,500 older people.
I have received a report of the review carried out by Department officials and will give consideration to its recommendations over the coming weeks. These focus on the need to reinforce the local community support ethos of the current scheme, to simplify the administrative arrangements and to take account of other developments since the scheme was introduced in 1996. Subject to available funds and with the co-operation of community groups, the current scheme will continue to process applications until a new scheme is introduced in early 2010.
Last year on 6 April, the Minister, Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív, announced funding for this scheme. The following day was budget day and the scheme was closed down. The Minister announced the re-opening of the scheme on 6 October. Eleven working days later my office rang the Department to discover if applications were being accepted and was told the scheme had closed. I believe it is open again but is dealing only with applications made before 21 October.
I want a commitment from the Minister of State, Deputy John Curran, that in the budget of 9 December this scheme will not be closed again. I also want a commitment that those persons who made an application after 21 October will have their applications dealt with and that funding will be in place for them. Elderly people are worried. They do not know whether the scheme is open or closed. The Minister of State is pulling wool over their eyes. He is using the old Fianna Fáil spin again — it is open one day, closed the next. It is a bit like the grant for older people. In my county alone, every Deputy was out announcing the wonderful scheme and asking elderly people to go and apply for it. The county council has €7 million in approvals and got €600,000 from the State a few weeks ago. Is the scheme open or closed? Will it stay open or will it be closed in the budget in December?
I ask the Minister of State to reply briefly because I want to include another Deputy.
I will try to give Deputy Ring straight answers. First, the scheme is open. Second, 4,500 people have availed of it to date. Third, I have applications on hand, received prior to 21 October in respect of approximately 1,800 people. As I said at the time, it is my intention that all these will be dealt with before Christmas. There were 840 pre-registered groups and 20 additional ones, totalling 860. It was a concern of the Department that each group would have an equal opportunity to apply for priority and be dealt with in a timely fashion. If that were not the case, what happened in the past was that groups would apply and six months later their application would be dealt with. We are dealing with these on an ongoing basis in a timely fashion.
There is a review and, as I stated in my response, pending the implementation of the new scheme those applications that are being and have been received will be processed. As I said time and time again, 860 groups were written to specifically and asked to forward priority cases. If they did so before 21 October, those applications were to be processed before Christmas. We are on target to honour that commitment.
Will the review be made available to Opposition spokespersons or will it be placed in the library? Deputy Ring mentioned grants for disabled people. In Kildare, €3.5 million was committed to that scheme, although €5 million was not committed to in respect of senior citizen grants. The grant in question must be dealt with positively in the forthcoming budget. People in our communities have a fear now that was never there before. Due to the banking crisis, some of them are hoarding their money at home and this is creating major problems. As Deputy Ring did, I ask that this scheme be underpinned in the forthcoming budget to provide funding for all organisations interested in having these facilities implemented.
Is the funding there?
Regarding the 1,800 people I mentioned, there is funding. Next year's budget will bring a figure, whatever it may be. That is part of the budgetary process as the Deputies know well. It is intended that the scheme will run next year. We have done a report and there are various recommendations and so on to consider. I have just received them.
While the scheme is generally working well, there are areas of concern in that it is not being administered equally across the country. Another interesting fact that arose concerns the piece of technological equipment in question. Most Deputies will know that equipment of this nature, whether one's computer, mobile telephone or LCD screen, has become cheaper in recent years but we have seen no reduction in the price of the equipment in question. There are a number of such issues that must be addressed.
I reiterate——
What about the report?
I have no problem making the report available in any format. I ask the Deputy to give me an opportunity to deal with the matter for a week or so first.
Written Answers follow Adjournment Debate
