Madam, - Dennis Kennedy (January 24th) is right to say we should not pretend that Irish is the language of Ireland. After all, there is no need to pretend: Irish is in fact the language of Ireland. It has been spoken here for over 2,000 years and has been reduced to a minority language only through oppression, betrayal and indifference.
To this end, ensuring its status in the Constitution as the first official language is not an "enshrinement" of "fantasy" or "nonsense", but an acknowledgement of historical fact and truth. Historical language rights are rooted in a people's perception of the importance of status of a language, based on the history of the language and the community that speaks it - regardless of how many people that is.
Furthermore, a language spoken by over 100,000 people every day in Ireland, and by approximately the same number abroad, can hardly be described as a "tongue that almost no one uses".
However, the issue of making Irish a working EU language is not about numbers but about basic rights, in this case the linguistic and cultural rights of a significant minority of Irish people. Also, were Irish to be made a working EU language, further employment opportunities would present themselves.
Mr Kennedy states that a "flood of EU documents" appearing in Irish would be "unintelligible to most Irish people". What he failed to highlight is that those same documents would be equally as unintelligible in English to most of us who are not au fait with EU terminology/lingo.
As things stand, Irish is disregarded by the EU when it requires the knowledge of three or more languages for filling positions. Consequently it discriminates against Irish citizens who are fluent in Irish, English and another European language. Meanwhile, the funding of the EU translation budget amounts to 1 per cent of EU spending, or €2 per year for each citizen.
Bearing all this in mind, Mr Kennedy is indeed correct in saying Ireland is "an odd country"; any other country worth its salt would have ensured working status for its national language a long, long time ago. In these circumstances, the only party guilty of being "both selfish and highly irresponsible" is the Irish Government. - Yours, etc.,
KEVIN HICKEY, Larchfield Road, Dublin 14.
Madam, - Dennis Kennedy (January 23rd) sets out the reality of the situation by exposing the nonsensical demands of the Irish-speaking lobby. They want the Irish language to be treated in the same way as the language of the new applicant countries. What they seem to ignore is that the EU has no choice in the matter, as it has to recognise the indigenous language in everyday use by the applicant countries. Regrettably, Irish is not the language of almost everyone here.
Thankfully, we speak English, which other non-English speaking countries envy as they struggle to catch up with what English has become - an international means of communication. It has nothing to do with culture or nationalism.
It seems to me the Gaeilgeoirí have got their priorities all wrong. Instead of requesting the Government to make a case to the EU to have Irish treated equally with all the other languages, would it not make more sense to lobby the Governments to have Irish implemented as the spoken language in Dáil Éireann? Having achieved that objective they would be on more solid ground in making a case to the EU. Then we could look forward to the day when the Taoiseach, that master of obfuscation, answers a Dáil question in the first official language. Now that would be worth staying up late for! - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN M. REDMOND, Hazelbrook Road, Terenure, Dublin 6.