EUROPE may be expanding to the East, but Brussels is desperately searching for interpreters from the West after Irish became the European Parliament’s latest official language.

Although a full translation service requires a team of 80, there is one native Irish speaker among the MEPs: Seán Ó Neachtain, of Fianna Fail.

Advertisements will be published next week to find linguists at an estimated annual cost of €677,000 (£456,000). A further five Irish MEPs might make use of the new facility, however, bringing the cost down to €110,000 a head.

The adoption of Irish as the EU’s 21st official language takes effect on January 1, the day when Bulgaria and Romania are expected to join and further expand the modern Tower of Babel in Brussels.

But attempts to recruit interpreters after the Irish Government’s successful campaign to have the country’s language recognised formally are floundering badly.

An initial advertising campaign in Ireland over the summer, which culminated in candidate tests in Dublin last month found not one applicant capable of matching the EU’s tough conference interpreting standards.

Despite the Irish campaign for language recognition, there is not a single specialised conference-level interpreter’s course in the Republic.

Six linguists, who were discovered in the summer recruitment drive, will instead be given European Parliament bursaries to train over the next year. The new adverts, being published next week, will seek English-speaking interpreters with a good working knowledge of Irish because of the lack of Irish-speaking candidates.

One EU source said: “The problem is that, in most EU countries, most people speak their own language. Irish is one of the official languages of the Irish Republic but maybe only 1 or 2 per cent of the population truly speak it on an everyday basis.

“The Irish Official Languages Act of 2003, which came fully into force in Ireland on July 14, is intended to redress the balance in favour of the ‘first official language’: all primary legislation and statutory instruments will need to be enacted in both English and Irish, and all public services are required to make provision for the use of the Irish language.”

The source added: “Native speakers tend to live in the West of Ireland and they do not seem particularly keen to come to Brussels because they and their children cannot then live in an Irish-speaking community.”

While interpreters are being sought, only set-piece speeches are likely to be translated simultaneously from texts prepared by the speaker. This does not satisfy Bairbre de Brún, the Sinn Fein MEP, who said: “The EU must be more ambitious in its pursuit of what is possible for the Irish language. It has been a long and hard struggle for Irish-language campaigners to ensure that Irish is on a level-playing field with other languages.” The successful campaign by the Irish has given heart to other linguistic groups such as Catalán and Galician speakers, who are far more numerous than the Maltese, who gained official status in 2004. Pressure is also growing for extra services for Welsh speakers.

With the accession of Bulgaria and Romania from January 2007 expected to be confirmed next week, and Croatian accession talks gathering pace — as well as the possible integration of Turkish-speaking Cyprus — another problem looms for the European Parliament. Space is running out, as there are only 26 booths for interpreters around the chamber.

A union of sorts - but not languages

If only English, French and German were to be used — common practice in the majority of European Commission meetings — the cost of translation would fall to less than £6,500 a day