Irish spoken at EU — but no one around to translate

MINISTERS have spoken in Irish 22 times at EU meetings since the language became an official one last January, while MEPs have used it about twice as often.

The European Commission Irish language website is up and running, however efforts to recruit at least 30 Irish language translators and interpreters at an annual cost of about €3.5 million have proven difficult.

There have been teething problems introducing the language to the European Union institutions over the last 10 months, Multi-lingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban is expected to tell representatives from a number of language organisations when they meet in Brussels today.