Sir, - Senator Labhras O Murchu's attempt (March 24th) at defending his recent lamentable report on Irish traditional music avoids the core of the scandal.
He was given £2,000 of public money and a period of three months by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language to prepare a report on the subject. He produced 15 pages of text (spread over 44 pages), and over seven of these were copied word for word from existing Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann publicity materials, the organisation of which he is director-general. Half a page of text was reserved for the listing of all other contemporary organisations in the area. Those not even mentioned included Raidio na Gaeltachta, Teilifis na Gaeilge, the Department of Music in University College Cork, the Irish World Music Centre of the University of Limerick, the Department of Irish Folklore of University College Dublin, the Folk Music Society of Ireland, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, and over a hundred others, large and small.
Although your readers will hardly credit it without reading the report themselves (available from Government Publications, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2, at £7), it recommends expensive and far-reaching courses of action in several areas which are not mentioned, much less examined, in the body of the report.
My constructive proposal is that the report should be totally withdrawn. - Yours, etc., Nicholas Carolan,
Irish Traditional Music Archive, Merrion Square, Dublin 2