Sir, – I fully support the Revenue Commissioners' reluctance to communicate with Brian Mac a’ Bhaird (February 21st) "as Gaeilge". Translating government documents into Irish is a complete waste of time and money. Government spending on teaching Irish is estimated to cost about €1 billion per annum.
While gaeilgeorí may hate to hear it, the Irish language is functionally useless in the modern economy, and as such the money spent is an extremely poor investment. It is also widely detested by students, who are force-fed second-rate poetry and literature out of some absurd sense of national pride. While the argument is often made that Irish is an integral part of our culture, culture can survive quite well without unwanted and unnecessary state coercion (see the GAA, Irish dancing and traditional Irish music as some examples).
According to the 2011 census, Irish now lags behind Polish in numbers of speakers who use the language daily outside of school. The fact Irish is not even the second most widely used language despite decades of State policy and funding towards propping it up should prove that the Irish language experiment has been an utter failure.
This pandering to gaeilgeoirí has gone on for far too long. The Irish language is never going to become a widely used language in Ireland and the sooner this is accepted the better. – Yours, etc,
EANNA COFFEY,
Fossa, Killarney, Co Kerry.