Sir, - At a recent meeting of Foram na Gaeltachta in Furbo, Co Galway, the Minister of State for the Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and Islands, Mr Eamon O Cuiv, defended the Government's commitment to the Irish language and the Gaeltacht. May an Englishman suggest one small way of illustrating the commitment?
In Connacht and elsewhere, except in large towns, it is very difficult to find bookshops and visitor centres with stocks of books, tapes, and other publications in the Irish language. No Irish-language matter was seen at the Grace O'Malley centre in Mayo at the height of the tourist season last summer; at Dublin Airport very few tapes of Irish songs in Irish are available; in Clifden, Co Galway last month, the bookshops had some dictionaries and one shop had two school texts - nothing more in Irish was to be seen.
Surely one of the first tasks to be undertaken by Udaras na Gaeltachta is to ensure that adequate stocks of books in Irish are on sale in bookshops throughout the country. The Minister of State will no doubt be eager to assist the new board of Udaras na Gaeltachta in this simple, essential, innovation. - Yours, etc.,
George Huxley, Trinity College, Dublin 2.