Community interpreting in Ireland

Ireland has changed from a country of net emigration to one of steady immigration by asylum seekers and by workers from both inside and outside the European Economic Area. There has been a rapid change from a mainly monolingual society to a multilingual one. Clearly this presents particular problems when non-English speakers are in contact with officialdom. Interpreting is provided in the courts, in police stations, in hospitals and over the phone for general practitioners. But the interpreters receive no training. They are not tested and there is no Code of Ethics. The official attitude is that this is merely a temporary problem because the non-English speakers will learn English and then there will no longer be a need for interpretation