Wide range of breaches in Irish language laws

SIGNIFICANT breaches of laws to promote the Irish language were found in school syllabuses and marking schemes, penalty points notification systems and school bus ticketing services, the Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga reported yesterday.

The commissioner, Seán Ó Cuirreáin, was appointed four years ago to monitor how state bodies comply with their obligations under the Official Languages Act, which seeks to ensure services through Irish by the civil and public service.

Among the 10 investigations he completed last year was one in relation to a complaint that up-to-date syllabuses in Irish were not available for all second-level subjects.

Mr Ó Cuirreáin found the Department of Education had breached a requirement of the 1998 Education Act by not having them available, although the department argued that the law allowed the minister discretion on provision of services in accordance with resources.

The commissioner said he was disappointed at the lack of transparency in some initial information provided to his investigation.

The State Examinations Commission was found to have breached legislation because the marking scheme for Leaving Certificate exam papers answered in Irish was only available in English. The issue arose when a parent helping her daughter check her script to decide whether to appeal the grade saw the examiner’s notes were written in English.

The commission had argued it would be difficult to ensure accurate translations of marking schemes in time and that there was no legal requirement to provide Irish language versions. The commissioner has given the examinations commission three years in which to ensure marking schemes in Irish are introduced for all subjects.

Mr Ó Cuirreáin found Bus Éireann breached the 1950 Transport Act which requires the printing of tickets fully in Irish or bilingually for its school transport scheme. This is despite the company’s claim that there could be issues around child safety as some drivers who were foreigners with no Irish would have problems validating tickets unless they contained instructions in a language they understood.

The commissioner reported that An Garda Síochána has moved to develop a bilingual system for dealing with issuing and processing of penalty points notices following an investigation by him. He had received a complaint that gardaí replied in English to correspondence in Irish from a native Irish speaker in the Gaeltacht, in a case relating to a fine and penalty points imposed for using a mobile phone while driving a car.

Although the breach of legislation was unintentional, Mr Ó Cuirreáin said the case highlighted that the newly automated and privatised system of dealing with these notices for An Garda Síochána was unable to process material in Irish.