TRANSLATING 60,000 pages of statutory instruments into the Irish language is likely to cost the state at least €3m.

A massive backlog of the legislation, which is rarely read even in English, will have to be cleared by a new translation unit which is being set up within the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.

A job as director of the new unit was advertised last week offering an annual salary of up to €133,000, but dozens more jobs will also have to be created to carry out the massive task.

A Supreme Court judgment earlier this year found that the state had failed in its duty to provide all legislation in both official languages.

"We don't know yet what size of a staff the unit will have," said a spokeswoman for the department. "There are no figures available for how much the project will cost and a lot will depend on the director who, when appointed, will look at all of these issues. Individual departments will be customers and will pay for the service. It is a legal requirement and we cannot break the law. There is a constitutional right to have the statutory instruments translated."

The department said the new translation unit had not been subject to the recruitment freeze because a specific undertaking had been given by the state when it lost the Supreme Court case.

Documents filed in that case disclosed that, between 1993 and 2004, 46,000 pages of statutory instruments were created, all of which are untranslated. In the four years since, 12,000 to 20,000 more pages of statutory instruments have been published.

The project, if contracted to the private sector at current rates, could end up costing the state €3m to €5m. Translating even a single page of the complex legal jargon will cost at least €50. Opponents of the plan have criticised the expenditure.

"It is extraordinary that funds are being spent on translating documents, which are barely if ever read in English, into Irish where they will be read even less frequently," said one Irish-language activist. "All the more so because children attending Gaelscoileanna and Gaeltacht schools are without textbooks on a par with those in the mainstream school system."

However, Cormac Ó hAodha, managing director of Irish language consultancy Oisín, said the new translation unit was the right decision.

"This is an obligation of the highest court in the land and it is not acceptable that the state is not compliant with its own legislation."