'Nobody was prepared to translate it'
The Cork County Development Plan (CDP), at it stands, will not be translated into Irish when it’s published for public consultation next week.
The last-minute revelation came at a recent special meeting of Cork County Council to finalise the CDP before public consultation begins on 22 April.
Senior planner Padraig Moore said the council tendered the draft plan for translation shortly after Christmas but “nobody was prepared to translate it”.
He said the council had done “everything humanly possible” to have the draft translated in time and the council had re-tendered the draft for translation but because of the size of it and the timelines involved, it would not be available in Irish during the consultation period.
He said the council fully intends for the final plan to be available in Irish and English.
Fianna Fáil Cllr Gobnait Moynihan expressed her surprise and anger at the announcement.
She said she understood the difficulties involved but it is a “legal obligation” that the document be in both English and Irish.
Cllr Moynihan asked the council to at least translate the sections of the plan pertaining to Cork’s Gaeltacht areas.
She highlighted that the council had been “pulled” on an almost identical issue in 2017 when An Coimisinéir Teanga found the council to have knowingly breached the statutory language obligation enshrined in the Official Languages Act 2003.
At that time, Cork County Council was found to have published Draft Local Area Plans (LAPs) in English only and used unofficial English place names for official purposes.
“The commission pulled the council up on this three years ago. I appreciate the effort that's been made, but I'm asking you to break it down and get as much as you can translated,” said Cllr Moynihan.
Chief Executive Tim Lucey said: “It's not that we have to do it – we want to do it. If we can't get it done as the largest county in the country, I have no idea what every other authority around the country is going to be able to do,” he concluded.