Sir, - Michael Purser (June 8th) listed seven themes for the EU which have been argued over: enlargement, voting, common defence, immigrants, fiscal policies, the Euro and GM foods. He observed that the leaflets of the three largest parties avoided reference to these - apart from Fine Gael, which favoured common defence.
There is another taboo, which The Irish Times also observes. Newly elected MEPs will discover that it is highly unlikely that any single member of parliament (a speaking place) will be able to converse with every other member; few can master all 11 - or 14 - official languages. If there be such a polyglot, it is even less likely that he or she can also speak easily in Hungarian, Polish, Czech, soon to be added.
Of the Irish MEPs before this election, 14 out of 15 unselfishly supported the introduction of an easily learnt neutral language. Patricia McKenna MEP even tabled a motion to that effect, and was good enough to launch my book about it, Everyone's Own Language, last March.
Dr Eugene Egan (June 10th) ended a fine letter by saying that it was his fifth anti-NATO letter to The Irish Times; none of the others had been published. I'll be surprised if I find that this is only my fifth letter about Esperanto - a language designed entirely for the sake of inter-ethnic peace. Every few years, one gets through. - Yours, etc.,
Maire Mullarney,
Whitechurch Road,
Dublin 14.