Claim that road safety plan delayed by Irish translation is queried

The Department of the Gaeltacht has questioned a claim by the Department of Transport that the delay in publishing the Road Safety Strategy is due to the requirement to translate it into Irish.

Under the Official Languages Act 2003, which came into force in May, all public bodies must provide bilingual versions of documents of public interest such as annual reports and strategic plans.

The Road Safety Strategy for 2004 to 2006 is ready for publication in English, according to the Department of Transport, but it cannot be released because the Irish version has not yet been completed.

"You can publish in Irish on its own, but you can't publish in English on its own, so you just have to wait until the Irish is ready to release it at all," a spokeswoman for the Department said. The text of the strategy was approved by the Government in February and was ready to go for publication in English within weeks. However progress had to be halted to allow the translators get to work.

"Translators are hard enough to find and the change in the legislation has put enormous pressure on them," a spokesman for the Department said.

However, a spokeswoman for the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, said it did not accept that the Irish version could cause the delay. "I understand that the strategy has been ready in draft from, in English, since February, so translation shouldn't be the reason. There's no way it could take from February until now to translate it."

The number of documents that had to be published in Irish at "the exact same time" as the English version was "very small", she said. The Department of Transport said it hopes the strategy will go to print before the end of the summer.