The Department of Education took two years to translate child protection guidelines for teaching staff into Irish, a task which could have taken a fraction of that time, according to the latest report of An Coimisinéir Teanga, the Irish language commissioner.
Local authorities have also refused to allow voters to use addresses in Irish in the new register of electors, the commissioner's office has found.
The report by An Coimisinéir Teanga Seán Ó Cuirreáin, published yesterday, shows a 47 per cent increase in the number of complaints made to his office in relation to breaches of language rights. This reflects an increase in public awareness rather than a decrease in services provided through Irish, Mr Ó Cuirreáin noted. However, cases such as the Department of Education's delay in translating a 36-page document on child protection are highlighted in the report.
"Child protection is an issue of fundamental concern to all those who deal with children and young people throughout the educational sector," Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said in her introduction to the guidelines for post-primary schools, published in September 2004.
Yet the Irish version did not become available until June 2006, by which time the schools requiring it were about to break for summer, Mr Ó Cuirreáin said.
In a separate case involving education, his report found that bonus marks were not being granted to pupils who provided their work through Irish in some sections of the State examination system, such as projects and research work. This put pressure on all-Irish schools to allow their pupils to undertake such work through English, as many of the sources of information are only available in English.
The commissioner complimented Bus Éireann on its multicultural website, which was providing information in six languages - but not Irish - until he contacted the company.
However, Mr Ó Cuirreáin's office was not so successful with the Department of the Environment, which believes the decision by local authorities to accept English addresses only in the new electoral register to be "sensible".
This undermines the concept of recognising addresses in Irish, as well as the use of bilingual placenames and road signs, Mr Ó Cuirreáin said. The discrepancy was "all the more baffling" in light of the suggested protection given to Irish in the Constitution and in legislation, as well as its status in the EU and the Government's recent "vision statement" on Irish.
Mr Ó Cuirreáin was appointed as the State's first Coimisinéir Teanga three years ago. His office monitors compliance with the Official Languages Act, 2003.
