A MINUSCULE proportion of the population is transacting internet business with the State through Irish, according to a survey of Government websites.
The Irish Timesasked Government departments for information on the web traffic through their sites in both English and Irish. In general, use of the Irish sites, where this could be established, was less than 0.5 per cent.
The survey showed that the Department of Social and Family Affairs has the most popular website, accessed by more than one in four of the population, followed by the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Agriculture.
The Department of Enterprise, which has a single Irish-language page but no full Irish site, showed the lowest level of activity in the first language, relative to English. While the English site claimed 782,000 unique users last year, the Irish-language page had just 272 users.
The Department of the Environment site had 454,000 unique users, but only 1,600 for the Irish language version. The Department of Justice website had 333,000 unique users in English and 11,000 for the Irish version.
The Revenue Commissioners site recorded 18,000,000 hits but only 88,000 for its Irish pages.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the English version of its website received 101,000,000 page impressions, while the Irish-language version recorded just 19,000 page impressions.
The Department of Social and Family Affairs said its website recorded over 9,300,000 page impressions, but only 61,000 for its Irish pages.
The Defence Forces said it was not economically viable to monitor traffic in Irish on its website, while other departments cited technical reasons for their inability to provide figures. With 1.22 million unique users, the website of the Department of Social and Family Affairs was the busiest.
Most departments spend small amounts on translating documents into Irish, because much of the work is done in-house or the cost is not calculated separately. Education spent €140,000 on translations last year, Social and Family Affairs €93,000, Enterprise, Trade and Employment €44,000, Agriculture €37,000 Health €11,000 and Foreign Affairs just €1,000.
Under the Official Languages Act, annual reports and other key documents have to be translated into Irish.
Fine Gael TD John Deasy described the Act as “an egregious waste of money” because of the duplication of effort it entailed. Government departments spent over €8 million on advertising in Irish since 2004, according to figures supplied to Mr Deasy in the Dáil last week.
Department websites: most used
Department of Social and Family Affairs.........1.22 million unique users
Department of Foreign Affairs........................................879,000
Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment....782,000
Department of Agriculture................................................... 745,000
Department of Health............................................................454,000
