Sir, - I refer to your education correspondent Emmet Oliver's report (September 6th) on the parents of two young boys in Wicklow who have refused to allow their children to learn Irish.
The father of the boys said Irish "is no use to them". Is not the objective of primary education - or any education - the development of a person's intellectual resources? This is, in many ways, independent of subject matter, but also implies that languages such as Irish, English and French are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
To raise the issue of "use" in the context of a primary school curiculum is missing the point. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Ruaidhri Kirwan, Skreen Road, Dublin 7.