Madam, - Naomi Elster (Teen Times, February 21st) believes Irish is dead. This is news to me, and to the many others who speak Irish every day. Certainly, all of us also speak English. In fact, many of us speak a third, and sometimes a fourth language.
The Finns, who are ahead of us in many areas of technology, all speak at least three languages - so much so that career guidance teachers advise pupils to mention language skills on a CV only if they are fluent in four or more languages.
My personal experience as a software engineer, working here and in Germany, is that having been raised bilingually with Irish and English was an advantage professionally. This is because languages are not interchangeable sets of tokens for communication; speaking several languages opens one's mind to nuances and different approaches.
Not everybody can be raised bilingually in Ireland. But everybody in Ireland has access to Irish at the touch of a radio button or (for increasing parts of the day) a TV remote control. The Gaeltacht is never more than a few hours' drive away, even from Laois.
We would be foolish to jettison this advantage. Being fluent in Irish does not hinder fluency in English, or other languages; on the contrary, it often aids it. - Yours, etc,
AONGHUS Ó HALMHAIN, Baile an Chinnéidigh, Co Chill Mhantáin.