A chara, - The anonymous "Drapier" column of July 2nd incorrectly states that I claimed the expenditure on implementing the Official Languages Act would be 0.2 per cent of spending budgets.
What I actually said was that the cost estimate to the Department of Social and Family Affairs would be less than 0.2 per cent of its administrative budget for 2005.
In fact, the correct figure for its estimate is 0.16 per cent of the administrative budget, or 0.004 per cent of the total expenditure of that Department.
Your unnamed correspondent then goes on to try and compare this 0.004 per cent estimate expenditure for one Department - i.e. €500,000 - with 0.2 per cent of GNP in the context of overseas development aid.
In relation to the actual cost of implementing the Languages Act, Brian O'Shea TD put down a series of questions which were answered on June 29th.
For the half-year to date, for nine Government Departments, the total cost was €217,617. Additional to this was the cost of the office of the Coimisinéir Teanga, which cost €292,000 in the same period.
Other than the cost of the office of the Coimisinéir Teanga, all of the costs are being met out of the existing administrative budgets of the respective Departments.
The facts are clearly at variance with Drapier's article.
However, I suppose even for "the paper of record", one should not allow the truth to get in the way of a good story. - Is mise,
ÉAMON Ó CUÍV TD, Minister for Community, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs, Mespil Road, Dublin 4.