Sickening waste of taxpayers’ money

Monday, October 26, 2009

YOUR report (October 15) that €30,000 was spent on translating three different development plans into Irish over four years.

As a taxpayer and an Irish-speaker I’m sickened at the thought of taxpayers’ money being spent in such a careless manner.

Surely, the various councils have employees competent enough in both official languages of the state to produce bilingual development plans and have them made available online in PDF format for people to print off as they like. If there are inadequate linguistic skills in some councils, then proper training should be made available for staff to upskill and avoid such outsourcing.

The issue here isn’t the cost of compliance with the Official Languages Act but smart governance and efficient public spending.

Seán O hAdhmaill
Plás Uí Artaigh
Baile Átha Cliath 8

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, October 26, 2009