Madam, - According to Tom Kitt, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, it would be unrealistic to expect concrete outcomes during the Irish EU presidency to the attempts to boost the status of the Irish language within the EU and its institutions (The Irish Times, January 22nd).
I'll tell Mr Kitt something else that is unrealistic: any hope that I will vote for a new EU Constitution without Gaeilge as an official EU language. - Is mise,
PÁID Ó DONNCHÚ, An tSaoirsin Na Forbacha, An Spidéal, Co na Gaillimhe.
Madam, - Pádraig Ó Cléirigh (January 22nd) makes a strong case for including Irish in the list of EU official languages.But surely we should be thinking of reducing the number of official languages to a total of one, and that one would have to be Esperanto.
I suggest that if the founder members of the Union had decided at the outset that all schools in the member-states would teach Esperanto, so that within 10 or 15 years it would be the only language used in international business within the Community, we would now be saving several hundred million euro a year in interpreting and translation costs.
The problem gets more expensive, with the addition of every new member-state - and it is not too late, even now, to take corrective action for the future. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN GLEESON, Ardnamara, Malahide, Co Dublin.