Committee supports Coimisinéir Teanga on necessary amendments and his views on cutbacks

(1) A provision to ensure that all state officers working or based in the Gaeltacht must be proficient in Irish. It stands to reason that the State should have a duty to provide services in whichever of the two official languages the citizen chooses. This is now more important than ever, at a time when the same communities are adopting language plans to retain their Gaeltacht status.

(2) An alternative system to replace the system of language schemes, whereby more services, particularly those not dependent on human resources, specified by regulations rather than various language schemes that must be painstakingly agreed upon with each individual public body. This system is not working nor are its goals being achieved.

(3) Classifying public bodies in accordance with the amount of communication and interaction they have with the public and placing the most exacting obligations on those that most provide services for the public.

(4) Ensuring that rights be specified through legislation in relation to the official language that a citizen chooses to be in use in case of a citizen’s name and address.

(5) Ensuring that public bodies come under the legislation automatically instead of being named in a schedule of the Act that needs to be updated. This is an action that has not been taken for over 10 years now.

(6) Ensuring that state services that are provided indirectly by third parties are dealt with in a more comprehensive manner.

ENDS/