The challenges and benefits of achieving better provision of public services through Irish are being considered at a conference in Galway this week.<\/p>\n
The discussions are taking place as part of a gathering of the International Association of Language Commissioners in the city.<\/p>\n
The group brings together delegates from around the world, who are charged with safeguarding lesser spoken languages.<\/p>\n
Much of their focus is on the manner in which people can access State provided services in specific languages.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Official Languages Commissioner told the conference that, in her experience, adequate staffing was key to upholding rules about the use of English or French in her country.<\/p>\n
“The key piece for me is to work on capacity. Does the Federal institution have the person power to actually deliver the service and I think that’s where most of our challenge lies,” said Kelly Burke.<\/p>\n
She added that there was a role for the higher education sector to ensure that there was a strong graduate pipeline to meet the demand for people who could offer services in different languages.<\/p>\n
That point was echoed by An Coimisin\u00e9ir Teanga, S\u00e9amas \u00d3 Concheanainn.<\/p>\n
He said that in line with a commitment to ensure 20% of recruits to the public sector would have Irish by 2030, an audit of existing proficiency was needed, as well as examining what areas needed to be strengthened by that time.<\/p>\n
He said that Irish language courses in universities needed to prepare for the increasing demand for fluent speakers under a range of headings and expertises.<\/p>\n
Mr \u00d3 Concheanainn said ensuring adequate competency was a vital to demonstrate that the needs and requirements of Irish speakers were being taken seriously and being properly vindicated.<\/p>\n
Minister for the Gaeltacht Dara Calleary said every effort was being made to meet the 2030 recruitment goal.<\/p>\n
He said he wanted to make sure the guidelines that would govern the targets would work, that they were ambitious and that they were practical.<\/p>\n
Mr Calleary said it was important to recognise that there were a range of services being provided and that differentiating between the requirements of each sector would be an important element of the plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The challenges and benefits of achieving better provision of public services through Irish are being considered at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-620083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}