Sir, – The article "EU job opportunities open up for Irish-speaking graduates" is presented as a good-news story (June 10th). However, I can see in this only a depressing waste of learning and talent. These high-grade Irish language graduates will labour over the years ahead to produce to exacting legal standards mountains of translations of highly technical documents. Sadly, any civil servant working in the area of EU regulation will confirm that the fruits of their efforts will remain completely unread and unconsulted. It will be a meaningless – but very expensive – ritual that will do nothing to enhance the standing of our first national language. The game was perhaps given away by the director general of the European Commission's translation services, who could recall only two occasions on which Irish was spoken at the Council of Ministers since it was accepted as an EU working language.
Surely there are more valid ways to foster the use of Irish and to encourage its study at university level. – Yours, etc,
OLIVER GROGAN,
Dublin 16.