The provision, dissemination and use of Irish legal terminology forms the subject of this contribution. The publication in 1957 of Tearmaí Dlí, the first official corpus of Irish legal terms, should have placed the Irish language on a more secure footing. The author explains why this did not transpire, a failure which has implications not only for translators in the Irish Parliament and at the European Institutions but also for the vitality of the language itself. The author acknowledges that the work itself had its failings, notably a dearth of information on the correct usage of the terms and on selectional restrictions, but points out that these could have been remedied, with the aid of advances in linguistics, in future editions. The author also highlights grammatical inconsistences in the Irish language which mitigate against clarity. This analysis is particularly valuable in the context of Irish becoming an official EU language in 2007 with the need for terminological consistency in the authentic texts of EU laws in Irish.