Sir, - Of course Kevin Myers is right! As a language teacher who has trained, lived and taught abroad, I can say that the huge amount of time spent in teaching Irish, and the fairly universal poor standard displayed by pupils, make a damning statement about language teaching in Ireland.
These schoolchildren are the victims of a distorted nationalistic dream that somehow this nation will begin to speak Irish again! All the time spent on this dream renders them little service, but it does deprive them of their right to acquire real skills for their future, such as learning another European language, studying information technology, etc.
It is glaringly obvious that Irish should be an optional school subject: there will always be enthusiasm for our national language, but there is no likelihood whatever of restoring a nation of Irish speakers.
Have the pious champions of Irish ever asked if the people of Ireland were consulted in the 1950s when the beautiful, centuries-old Irish script was abolished and artificial, anglicised spelling invented words scattered with "h's" and "m"' (inserted instead of accents) where they had never before existed in the language? Such arrogant tampering with a living language would never have been tolerated by the people. But that was forty years ago and Irish was a dead language - scholars" could alter and corrupt the alphabet, and people hardly noticed or cared. Today, like Lazarus from the tomb, Irish is up and running - better than a dream, it's a miracle!
The whole question of the Irish language is a political hot potato. To voice what Kevin Myers and this letter are saying would be political suicide. - Yours, etc.,
Sea Road, Arklow, Co Wicklow.