Madam, - David M. Neligan's letter of January 16th is seriously inaccurate. His assertion that "in Brussels the demand to have Maltese made a working language is regarded as the height of absurdity" itself borders on the absurd.
Whomever he may be referring to in Brussels, it is certainly not the Commission or Council of the European Union.
Maltese was eligible to become an official language of the Union because it is an official national language of Malta. Believing it to be in Malta's best interests with regard to employment and other matters, the Maltese Government informed the Commission in June 2001 of its intention to have Maltese designated an official language.
The Commission formally noted that position in May 2002, and when all countries, including Ireland, signed the new Treaty of Accession in April 2003, Maltese was legally included in the list of official languages of the EU with effect from May Day 2004. Monitoring reports have not indicated any difficulty whateverwith dialect issues, and the translation of necessary documents is proceeding efficiently.
It is completely untrue to suggest that every document of the Commission or the Council would have to be translated into Irish. Only a small proportion of EU documents are translated into all of the official languages. There are three dominant working languages, English, French and German, and most important documents originating in other languages are made available in at least one of these.
Summaries of documents are sometimes provided in all official languages, but translation into all of the official languages is done only on the basis of need. Only the treaties and the Official Journal must be made available in all of the official languages.
These constraints on the extent of translation are perfectly legal, since institutions of the Union may stipulate in their rules of procedure which of the languages are to be used in specific cases.
There would be no onus on Irish Ministers to express themselves in Irish at any meetings, since they would be perfectly free to use English or any other official language, and especially since interpretation is frequently provided only in English, French, and German. Such is the case with the weekly meetings of the Commission in Brussels, and at staff meetings in the Commission no interpretation is supplied. Maltese Ministers, likewise, will likely continue to use English exclusively in their dealings with the Commission and the Council, just as they did during negotiations.
One institution where reasonably full interpretation is available is the Parliament, at the insistence of that body, but even there relay languages are used; not every language is translated into every other language, but most languages are translated into the dominant working languages, and then onwards to other languages.
On the question of costs, Irish taxpayers will be paying their share of the language budget of the EU whether Irish is official or not, and for the year 2002 the cost to every person in Ireland was €2. The language regime accounts for about one per cent of the total EU budget.
There are 21 treaty languages and 20 official languages, Irish being the exception. For reasons of eligibility for employment in the EU, for the rights of native Irish speakers to express themselves fully in the European Parliament, so that European laws which are enforced in Ireland may be available in both official languages of Ireland, for parity of esteem with the new countries, and for the future security of the language itself, it is important that Irish be designated an official working language of the European Union. - Yours, etc.,
Dr PÁDRAIG Ó LAIGHIN, Garrán Bhaile na gCorr, Cluain Tarbh,
Baile Átha Cliath 3.