Sir, – I refer to your editorial "EU post-Brexit: Ireland must align itself with Europe" (September 30th), which argues that Ireland is still too "oriented towards the English-speaking world" and ought to better align itself to an increasingly more integrationist pro-Brexit Europe to better handle questions such as corporate tax harmonisation.
However, if Ireland were to become more Europeanist, it could be cut off from its older Anglophone ties with not just Britain but with non-EU nations as well, such as Australia, Canada and the United States, which not only have historically large Irish populations but continue to take in large numbers of young Irish emigrants, particularly during the recession.
The importance of Ireland as an English-speaking nation cannot be overstated, as despite over 40 years of EU membership, young Irish people could not be described as multilingual as their continental counterparts.
The Netherlands and Denmark, mentioned as similar to Ireland as “small countries with close trading ties to Britain”, are also the EU nations with the highest non-native proficiency in English, in contrast to other EU nations such as Spain and France, which have relatively low proficiency in English (according to the EF English Proficiency Index 2016).
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Despite the best efforts to encourage Irish over the last century, Irish national newspaper editorials continue to be written in English, and they are certainly not written in either German, French or Spanish. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN OLIVER
MURRAY,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.