Irish and other languages

Back in June, we noted that the Council has adopted a rather interesting "Conclusion" on "the official use of additional languages within the Council and possibly other Institutions and bodies of the European Union".
The idea is to allow people who speak and write a language which is an official one in their member State but which is not an official language at the EC level to use that language in their relations with the Council (and possibly other institutions). The languages concerned are those like Welsh, Russian, Basque, Catalan, Galician and probably some others we have not heard of and certainly cannot speak. The practical result of this "Conclusion" is that the member State of the language in issue bears the cost of its use.
The official languages of the EU at present are, according to Regulation 1/1958 , German, English, Danish, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish and Czech.

The important thing is that a new regulation - Council Regulation (EC) N° 920/2005 - was adopted on June 13th 2005 amending Regulation n° 1 and adding the Irish language with effect from 2007. But, there is a derogation for 5 years renewable according to which the institutions are not bound to draft all acts and publish them in Irish. The Council can review that derogation every five years and decide unanimously to end it.