Sir, – Eoin Drea (“War highlights Ireland’s peripheral position in EU”, Opinion & Analysis, September 15th) writes that “soon Ireland will have to decide how ‘European’ it really wants to become.”
I recently looked (in vain) for a French-language newspaper or magazine in Dublin. Indeed, there seemed to be a lack of anything that wasn’t in English.
The lack of availability of continental media, combined with the underwhelming attention paid to language teaching in schools, contributes to our cultural marginalisation in the EU, making us potentially more susceptible to anglophone (US and UK) anti-EU populism.
At the same time, the prevailing monolingualism fosters a culture of (anglophone) neoliberalism or hypercapitalism, weakening the progressive influence that some of our fellow EU members might otherwise exert. – Yours, etc,
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PAUL O’BRIEN,
Dublin 8.