Sir, – Is there a connection between Derek Scally's report ("Efforts to build world economy limited by lack of languages", March 7th) of fears that Ireland's economic growth is limited by our poor performance in European languages and reports last month (Sorcha Pollak, "J1 hopefuls meet US employers in Dublin", February 10th) of a large number of students hoping to get J1 visas to spend their summers in the US?
Apparently thousands of Irish job vacancies cannot be filled by Irish graduates because of their chronic lack of German and other languages.
“Ireland’s indigenous sector has psychologically switched off certain markets and they don’t go further for cultural and linguistic reasons”, said the head of education and social policy at Ibec.
If they’re all heading off to a linguistically unchallenging environment for the summer, when they could be learning cultural and linguistic skills in Europe that would open up more job opportunities, we shouldn’t be surprised. – Yours, etc,
DOIREANN NÍ BHRIAIN,
Rathmines, Dublin 6.