The Minister for Social Affairs has announced the introduction of a language plan which will increase the availability of services in his department to Irish language speakers.
Legislation introduced in 2003 compels each public body to prepare and implement a language plan when requested to do so by the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
Under the Official Languages Act 2003, 43 public bodies have introduced language plan schemes so far. Each scheme describes the services which that public body proposes to provide through Irish.
Minister Séamus Brennan, announced the commencement of the Department of Social & Family Affairs language scheme today.
Under the legislation, public bodies are also obliged to outline measures to adopt to ensure that services which are not being provided through Irish will be made available through Irish.
Under the Department of Social Affairs scheme, primary application forms, information leaflets and secondary forms (those used to reply to application forms) will be made available bilingually.
The scheme also undertakes to ensure that Irish will be the working language in offices located in the Gaeltacht before the end of 2020.
Additional training courses will be made available to staff in order to improve their Irish language ability which will allow an increase in the services available to the public in the future.
Minister Brennan said: "Preparations for the implementation of the scheme have been in train for some time."
"These include specialized training of front-line staff - those dealing directly with the public - in the use of Irish. In addition, there has been increased use of Irish signage and availability in Irish of forms and leaflets in regular use in the Department over the past number of years," he said.