Was reading through the Acts of the Oireachtas today when it dawned on me just how much printing would go into printing each statute book in both Irish and English. Together with the re-printing of other government documents and Irish road signs, replication of government websites in Iris etc. etc., are there any estimates as to the total cost to the government of reprinting all these things in Irish?

(I doubt it's all that much in the scheme of things, just curious)

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To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.

Presumably it costs about 50% of whatever the total printing cost is.

Well yes presumably (plus, maybe, some translation costs) but I don't have any exact figures.

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To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.

Your right - just print in Irish.

Why print at all? Why not just make them solely available online and place the responsibility of printing with whomever wants the paper experience - its what the Govt. did with debt, i.e., personalised it, so why break from the most recent tradition?

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We are "they"

Well with road signs and stuff like that the answer is obvious, you have to print. Also with the example I noted above, the Acts of the Oireachtas, printed versions make a much better study/research aid than online versions but would cost a lot of money for the individual to print, and when you multiply that by the thousands of people who may need to use the Acts it's much more efficient to simply print them as books and keep them in the library.

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To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.

The problem you state is a user interface issue, i.e., people's preference to use a paper medium rather than an electronic one. I do a lot of my research in online journals and programmes like Citation manager and Reference manager allow management of links and references. I think as more people become more used to electronic formats it will change...but it will be almost generational in time dynamic. I take your point about the library storage of them - as a central hard copy.

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We are "they"

I know that in Galway, when the by pass through Claregalway was going through an environmental impact assesment, it came out and objectors demanded it be translated to Irish, just to put the project back, they got their wish, it was put back at considerable cost to the taxpayer and also considerable annoyance to those trying to get the hell out of Galway on a Friday evening...

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"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
- Sigmund Freud (speaking about the Irish)

Unfortunately the Taoiseach or Noel Dempsey have not said that they are going to give equal status to both Irish and English on our road signs. Presuming we do get it the change will relate to future signage as it would probably cost billions to change all the signs in the country.

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I think it is rather quaint that we have Irish translations on street signs, but as the spoken medium in the country is English, naturally, it must take precedence - particularly on road warning signs.