Madam, - Your reviewer Adrian Frazier (Nov 11th) seems to have read a different Report on "The Future of Irish Studies" than the one reporting on the forum which I attended at Florence in 2005. The event was far from a get-together of emigrant Irish academics praising Irish essentialism and looking for money from the State to fund their enterprises abroad.
If he bothered to look at the list of those attending he would have seen that about a third of them were scholars and natives of countries like Spain, Portugal, France and the Czech Republic who have devoted themselves to teaching Irish studies for years, in university systems whose underfunding makes NUI Galway look like the Getty.
Nearer home, those of us who have for decades been trying to teach Irish history in Britain - where surely above all places it should be learned - have relied heavily on the help and support of the Irish Embassy and the Cultural Relations Committee; and the seed-corn spread by the small grants awarded to postgraduates via the British Association of Irish Studies, though only a few hundred pounds apiece, has made an immense difference. It is hardly importunate to suggest that, rich as Ireland now is, a cultural body such as the Alliance Française or the Goethe Institute, including within its remit linkage to academic Irish studies abroad, is overdue.
Pace Dr Frazier, the state of affairs within Ireland, where academics are extremely well paid and the IRCHSS does sterling work in distributing money to scholars for research purposes, does not seem to contradict this need.
The connection between the lively and developing world of Irish studies abroad, and Irish universities within the island, is good for all concerned, especially the students, and should be facilitated in the ways outlined at Florence.
The delegates to the forum working within the Irish system (and there were many of them) saw this point, even if Dr Frazier refuses to. - Yours, etc,
RF FOSTER, Carroll Professor of Irish History, University of Oxford, Oxford.