Sir - There's a saying in computer programming circles, "The last thing the world needs is another programming language." For me, this also applies to spoken languages. There are many people for whom the Gaelic language is valuable. There are others, like me, for whom it is indisputably worthless. The country should accommodate both groups, and those in between, by giving parents and children the option of not studying Gaelic.
People have been speaking English in the countryside where I grew up (Co Meath) since before the time of Chaucer. In the Republic overall, most people live in localities that have been English-speaking since at least Tudor times.
Typically, people today study Gaelic in school for 10 years, and two or three years afterwards they can't speak more than a few strings of cliches in it. Gaelic is never going to become a first language and it has very little to offer as a second language.
It is on an artificial life-support system, never to come back to real life. I would shed no tears if the plug were pulled on it completely. But that's a matter of taste; Gaelic remains valuable to some people. But it is more than a mere issue of taste when the government crams it down everyone's throat with no good reason. It is an oppression that I and later my children should be forced to study Gaelic when it is indisputably worthless to me and them. Making Gaelic optional in primary and secondary school is consistent with freedom, tolerance and prosperity. - Yours, etc., Sean Furlong,
Canal Street, San Rafael, California, USA.