2026-02-10

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle as an gceist seo a roghnú and I thank the Minister of State for being here. The lack of a regulatory framework and national standards for professional interpretation in judicial but also medical settings is an issue of huge concern in this country following the judgement by the Court of Appeal in the case of Director of Public Prosecutions v. HM and BO, which quashed the conviction of a married couple who were convicted of female genital mutilation, as the court found evidence of inaccuracies and distortions in the interpretation of the appellant's testimony, including the mistranslation of key legal and medical terms, omission of critical information, confusion of pronouns, and distortion of questions and answers which affected the jury's ability to accurately assess the appellant's credibility and reliability. Government needs to take action to deal with the lack of training and testing of legal interpreters in this country. Interpreters should have a high level of proficiency in English and in another language. However, the ability to speak two languages is not enough. They also need to master legal terminology in both languages and to be familiar with regional variations of vocabulary and idioms. In addition, they require excellent short-term memory along with consecutive and whispered simultaneous interpreting skills. Further, interpreters must also be able to preserve the register used by the speaker. Interpreters also need to understand ethical principles applicable to legal and to medical interpretation. This is a specialised role that requires significant training and competence, but there is no accredited training for legal interpreters in Ireland. They are not tested to establish their competence and there is no national standards framework or professional code of ethics. That means in practice that anyone who can speak two languages can work as an interpreter in the courts, healthcare settings and other public institutions. Without reliable interpreting services, language barriers can hinder everything from healthcare and education to legal processes and community integration. We need a strong legislative framework that underpins and regulates this crucial provision. It is not only necessary but fundamental to promoting equity and inclusion. We can look at the differential to Irish Sign Language because that got official recognition through the Irish Sign Language Act 2017, unlike spoken language interpreting, so there is a differential because this mandates public bodies to provide accredited ISL interpreters. The lack of a professional framework for spoken interpretation creates significant clinical and patient safety risks in medical settings when medical consultations rely on untrained staff or family members. There are also risks in education as schools often lack a formal policy or budget for this and frequently rely on children and friends to translate for parents. This issue has been raised for decades. In 2008, the then Minister of State with responsibility for integration, Conor Lenihan, published a report, Developing Quality, Cost Effective Interpreting and Translation Services in Ireland. The report addressed the lack of regulation in Ireland's translation and interpreting sectors and there were a number of recommendations, including a whole-of-government approach, setting national standards, requiring specific qualifications, and establishing a central register of accredited interpreters. To date, no such centralised regulatory body or mandatory national register has been fully established across all public services. Nearly two decades after that, many of the original problems, such as the use of unqualified interpreters, persist in the legal, asylum and healthcare systems. There are examples in other jurisdictions where this has been done effectively, such as Italy and Sweden. All of the evidence and research tells us that this needs to be regulated.

On behalf of the Minister for justice, I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. It is important to state that the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has no role in individual court proceedings, nor can he intervene in operational matters that fall under the remit of courts, including the processes by which translation and interpretation services are provided. Management of the courts is the responsibility of the Courts Service, which is independent in exercising its functions under the Courts Service Act 1998 and the Constitution. In relation to introducing State-accredited training, the Minister is advised that the Courts Service, like many other public service bodies, has a contract for interpretation services under the interpretation service procurement framework set up by the Office of Government Procurement. The Minister is further advised that this contract requires the contracted company to ensure that interpreters possess the qualifications and competence appropriate to the tasks for which they are employed. The contract agreed under the central procurement framework sets the standards for interpreters supplied to the Courts Service. Ireland has opted into EU Directive 2010/64/EU. Article 5 states that Member States are required to take concrete measures to ensure the quality of the interpretation and translation services. However, the article does not mandate member states to establish a register. The Minister has been advised that there are no plans at present to create such a register. Where the court of its own motion, or on application by any of the parties to the hearing, considers that the interpretation being provided is not of such a quality as to ensure that the person before it can effectively exercise his or her right to a fair trial, it may direct that the interpreter be replaced. The Minister has been advised by the Courts Service that on the rare occasion where an issue arises, defendants, with their legal representatives, can and do have the entitlement to inform the court that a defendant cannot follow proceedings because of the quality of interpretation. Where this arises, proceedings are adjourned until another interpreter is found. The right to fair procedures is a central tenet of our criminal justice system. Ireland opted into the EU directive on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings and it was subsequently transposed into Irish law. This was done via two statutory instruments, one relating to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings, which relates to the arrangements to be put in place by the Courts Service in respect of the conduct of court proceedings and the second which relates to interpretation and translation for persons in custody in Garda Síochána stations.

I am disappointed by that response. The Minister of State referred to a directive of the European Parliament that compels member states to take concrete measures to ensure interpretation and translation provided meets the necessary quality standards. I have presented an example of where that did not happen. There is a line in the directive that member states must endeavour to establish registers of interpreters and translators. This is something that is best practice, which professional linguists and people such as Professor Mary Phelan in DCU have been calling for for decades. We need to move away from the concept that any bilingual person can be a competent interpreter. We need to move away from outsourcing because there is an issue with quality control. We need to have accredited, university-level courses for legal interpreters. We need a regulatory body and a register. We need for longer trials to have two competent interpreters. The UK has a new qualifications framework and a contract for spoken language services that was tendered in autumn 2024. We need to follow suit. It is not just me who is saying this. People who are experts in in this field are saying it because we need to develop a framework for formal accreditation and a national register for spoken language interpreters in healthcare and judicial settings. There have been examples where people have gone into hospital and people have used Google Translate. It primarily concerns migrant healthcare. There is a report with recommendations. They just need to be implemented.

The Deputy makes his point very well in a very sound, fair and reasonable fashion but I remind him that the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has no role in individual court proceedings. As I have previously noted, Article 5 of EU Directive 2010/64/EU requires member states to take concrete measures to ensure the quality of interpretation and translation services. A 2018 European Commission report on the implementation of the directive did not flag any issues of concern regarding Ireland’s approach to same and no open infringement proceedings are under way in this regard. All procurement by the Courts Service is governed by EU directives on procurement that set out rules and procedures designed to ensure equal treatment, mutual recognition, proportionality and transparency in the awarding of public contracts. Procurement decisions must in all respects be fair and equitable and ensure value for money. The Courts Service must be able to justify decisions made and actions taken. In all cases, the Office of Government Procurement public procurement guidelines for goods and services, which set out the rules and best practice on the various stages of the procurement process, must be followed by all staff. I reiterate that the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has no role in individual court proceedings, including the processes by which translation and interpretation services are provided. On my behalf and that of the Minister, I thank the Deputy for raising this very important matter.