Sir, - In response to Austin Duff (September 4th), I would like to point out that the poor grades achieved by Leaving Certificate students in Irish are symptomatic of the fact that a lot of people would rather chose a different subject than Irish and resent being forced to study a subject that they are not interested in.
For me, learning Irish was a waste of time as I have no intention of studying it further or speaking it ever again. In fact it was the only completely useless subject that I was taught at school. It is virtually impossible to force people to learn and speak a language against their will. The attempt of the Government to do this has resulted in a huge waste of time and money, as well as being very unfair and causing resentment against the language.
It is time that Irish became an optional subject in schools, so that people could have a wider range of subjects to chose from. Those choosing Irish would be a smaller but more enthusiastic group of students. - Yours, etc., Edward Kelly,
Palmerston Road, Dublin 6.