Kildare gaelgóir takes unfair dismissal case 

A KILDARE gaelgóir who is taking an action against a government agency believes that two of the three acts needed for his legal argument are not yet translated into the State’s official language – 23 years after the Irish Language Act was introduced.

Seanán Ó Coistín (45), originally from Kilcock is taking the case against the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

Seanán is a former translator for Irish at the EU, who returned to Ireland at the end of the pandemic to take up a communications position with website of the FSAI.

However, he alleges a cultural antipathy to the national language there within taking up the position on 1 July 2022 almost immediately.

“Within 10 minutes a manager saw my name in Irish and asked, ‘are you a member of Sinn Fein?’ which I found hostile and inappropriate,” said Seanán.

“Then I started noticing little things, I noticed a lot of the Irish names with fadas – the Siobhán’s, the Gráinnes, the Ciaráns – weren’t being spelt right,” he said.

“Then I noticed on an FSAI-headed email, the footer with all the relevant information had seven spelling and grammar mistakes, and nobody noticed.

“That wouldn’t happen in English, but this sort of sloppiness is allowed and tolerated with Irish.

“It struck me as odd that nobody in there had fluent Irish. There was an ‘official’ Irish officer in there, but I never heard her speak.

“Then there was this case when the most popular café in the country - Pota Café next door to TG4 in Connemara – applied to the FSAI for the Safe Catering Pack the main document for food control, but it was not available in Irish.” Seanán claimed that one colleague said that such Irish language applications were “very annoying”.

“This is what I was noticing over the two and a half years.

“Then, in 2024 the FSAI spent €10,500 to publish its 2023 Annual Report in Irish, and it was a shoddy translation that they wouldn’t fix.

“This was something they wouldn’t do in English, this was the kind of slop and double standards that was tolerated.

“At the FSAI at the time there were 140 staff speaking 16 different languages but couldn’t find one person to check an Irish translation.

“Then, a few weeks before I was leaving, I sent an email around to try and inspire people to learn Irish.

“OK, I may have been a bit strong, but they put me on administrative leave a few hours later,” he said.

Aggrieved, Seanán decided to take an action for unfair dismissal against the FSAI to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

When he began his preparations, he claimed he discovered that two of the vital legislative instruments of his potential defence are not yet translated into the State’s official language.

Seanán is relying on three Acts – the Unfair Dismissal Act, the Protected Disclosure (Whistleblowers) Act, and the Fixed Term Employment Act – for his case at the WRC, however, on the first of the three is translated into Irish.

Since then, the main translator of the Oireachtas has reveled that up to 50 per cent of all State legislation doe does not exist in an Irish version because “they don’t have the resources”.

“President Catherine Connolly gave a speech last week saying that this was ‘a big concern’,” said Seanán.

“This problem goes right to the top, and the State is covering its arse.

“How can a legal system properly function if half the laws aren’t translated?

“When it comes to the constitution, Irish is the final version of the law.

“People think this situation will never arise, so it’s basically institutionalized laziness.

“Why is the Irish State so slow to publish legislation in Irish?

“Somebody could get away with murder over this if appropriate legislation was not translated.

“Remember about 20 years ago the State had to release a load of sex offenders because of a loophole like this and then had to scramble to re-write the laws?

“When the Irish Language Act was brought in in 2003, I thought this was the beginning, but the FSAI did nothing, the WRC did nothing, the State did nothing. This is why these problems are happening,” he concluded.

Seanán’s WRC case continues later this month.

The FSAI have confirmed the action in a short statement.

“A former employee, Seanán Ó Coistín has brought two separate complaints against the Food Safety Authority of Ireland before the WRC, a complaint pursuant to Section 8 of the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977-2015, and a complaint pursuant to Schedule 2 of Protected Disclosures Act, 2014”.

“The hearing was held on 9 June, and a second part was adjourned and is due to be held at the end of June. As this hearing is ongoing, the FSAI cannot comment”.