03/01/2022 (Agence Europe) – The Irish government announced, on 31 December, that the derogation on the status of the Irish language in the EU institutions would end at midnight on the same day and that it would now be at the same level as the other official languages of the EU. The Irish language was given official and working status on the 1 January 2007. However, a derogation agreement was put in place due to a shortage of translation staff limiting the amount of documents translated into Irish. The EU institutions have over 170 Irish-speaking staff who use tools such as terminology databases, machine translation aids and computer-assisted translation software to translate all documents into Irish. The number of employees is expected to increase to approximately 200 by early 2022. (CG)