A Chara, - David M. Neligan (January 16th) is mistaken: Irish is not an official language of the EU. Council Regulation 1/1958, as amended, governs this matter. Article 1 of 1/1958 states: "The official languages and the working languages of the institutions of the Union shall be Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish."
The direct and mandatory implications of this are set out in Articles 4 and 5: "Regulations and other documents of general application shall be drafted in the 11 official languages" and "the Official Journal of the European Communities shall be published in the 11 official languages". In short European law, because it is, unlike international treaties, directly enforceable in the member-states is issued in the official languages of those states, except of course Irish.
Mr Neligan's spectre of thousands of unread documents being printed in Irish or of Irish translations of meetings for Anglophone ministers is inaccurate and misleading. Article 6 of 1/1958 states: "The institutions of the Community may stipulate in their rules of procedure which of the languages are to be used in specific cases." In practice the internal languages of work of the institutions are English, French and, increasingly, German.
At the Council of Ministers Mr Neligan's Finn or Greek will more than likely speak English. This does not make Finnish or Greek less official, nor would it make Irish less official. Europe has always had a lingua franca.
The real issues here are the availability in our national language of laws enforceable here; the disregarding of Irish by the EU when it requires a knowledge of two or three or more languages for the filling of posts; and our funding the EU translation budget (1 per cent of EU spending or €2 per year for each citizen) while we derive no benefit. - Yours, etc.,
DÁITHÍ MAC CÁRTHAIGH,
Law Library,
Dublin 7.