Sir, - A recent correspondent, Mr O Cuanachain, naively believes that even today it is possible to revive the Irish language and that by doing so, there will be a sort of revival of a distinctively moral Gaelic people. Humbug!
The Irish people have rejected "their" language, which survives only through a costly life-support machine, manned by extremists protecting their sacred cow. This rejection really happened after the Famine, when the number of Irish speakers declined dramatically from being over 40 per cent of the population to 14 per cent by 1900. After 1922, when Irish became a compulsory school subject, it proved too late for revival. Despite numerous costly and often ingenious attempts by successive governments, the result has been "a ghastly failure", as a leader in your paper declared some time ago.
The question of language and identity is debatable. Look at the Welsh. They have nurtured their language much more successfully than us, yet they remain in the United Kingdom. Once separation had been raised in 1916, differences between England and this country had to be exaggerated, even though they often did not exist. The futile effort to revive Irish language was one way to enforce a difference. It was children who bore the brunt of this political decision.
There is the additional argument that the distinctive characteristics of the Irish have been brilliantly expressed in the way they write and speak English, from Dean Swift to Shaw to Beckett. They have enriched the English language and made Irishmen justly famous.
Irish people have declared for generations that their first language is English. Is it not time their elected politicians changed the Constitution to reflect this reality by making Irish the second official language? - Yours, etc.,
Robert Barry, Military Road, Killiney, Co Dublin.