A chara, – I refer to Garret FitzGerald’s article (Opinion, June 13th), in which he claims: “The Greens might also gain considerable kudos by using their new bargaining power to force Fianna Fáil to abandon the extravagant and anti-environmental Ó Cuív policy of requiring State bodies to publish expensive glossy reports in Irish as well as English, and requiring these bodies to throw out their notepaper so as to substitute it with Irish language headings.” Dr FitzGerald is badly misinformed.
I wholeheartedly agree that “glossy, expensive reports” are a huge waste of taxpayers’ money. As I have often said on the public record, it would be much more cost-efficient and sustainable to publish reports online in both languages. This would satisfy all requirements of the Official Languages Act 2003 and ensure free access to all.
The preparation of reports costs much more than their translation and I would hope that this new consciousness about how much is spent on reports would encourage bodies to be more succinct and concise, thus saving the State considerable amounts of money.
With regard to notepaper etc, the requirement is that public bodies use up existing supplies of stationery until they run out, and only then, when new stocks are being ordered anyway, include the Irish language headings as appropriate. This avoids any extra cost to the agency and the taxpayer.
Dr FitzGerald, it appears, has been given inaccurate information about the Official Languages Act. I am more than happy to discuss the legislation with him at any stage to avoid any further misunderstandings. – Is mise,