Irish has moved a step closer to becoming an official and working language of the European Union after a meeting of EU ambassadors showed broad support for the proposal.
Irish officials are now confident of securing within weeks the unanimous approval of all member-states that is needed to change the language's status.
Ireland's EU Ambassador Anne Anderson told the meeting that the limited translation regime the Government was requesting for Irish would cost less than €500,000 a year.
For a transitional period of four years, the Government is asking only that legislation agreed by both the European Parliament and the 25 EU member-states in the Council of Ministers should be translated into Irish. The Government is not asking for the acquis communitaire, about 80,000 pages of EU laws, to be translated into Irish.
The Government estimates the annual cost of translating such legislation, which runs to between 1,000 and 1,200 pages each year, at €485,000. This would cover the cost of translation and the services of a number of jurist-linguists.
Additional start-up costs in the first year, covering installation of staff and equipment and computer costs, are estimated at €400,000.
The total sum of €885,000 for the first year does not include the cost of interpretation from Irish in the European Parliament and, occasionally, in the Council of Ministers.
The EU now spends about €1.2 billion each year on translation - or €60 million for each of the 20 official and working languages.
Two countries asked yesterday for official EU confirmation of the Government's cost estimate before agreeing to change the status of Irish.
France wanted an assurance that introducing a limited translation regime for Irish would not undermine the equal status of all official and working languages in the EU.
Irish officials expressed confidence that both concerns raised could be addressed satisfactorily within the next few weeks, opening the way for an agreement as early as next month.
Spain's request for an enhanced status for a number of its regional languages, including Basque and Catalan, met greater resistance at yesterday's meeting.
A number of ambassadors warned that such a move could trigger a flood of requests to improve the status of lesser-used languages throughout the EU.