Madam, - An tUas. Mac Aodha (February 1st) adds an important element to our understanding of this phenomenon.
He accepts that Irish business enterprise since Independence has been hamstrung by an inherited poor view of the wealth-creating potential of Irish persons and resources. But he points out, and I accept it, that this disparaging valuation hasn't (as I suggested) crippled enterprise only when some Irishman who is contemplating a project applies it to himself and the native resources. It has also maimed enterprise when bystanders applied it vocally to a would-be entrepreneur's project, thereby disheartening him and thwarting it.
This "discouraging environment" factor has similarly cut the wings of Irish intellectual enterprise. Take an ambitious young academic, undecided whether his first book should be about T.S. Eliot or the poets of the Bolshevik revolution.
If he reads, as he certainly will, a few issues of Books Ireland - where all new books by Irish authors are listed - he will gather that Irish academics confine their books to Irish matters, and, taking heed, will preserve himself from any un-Irish deviation. - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND FENNELL, Parson Court, Maynooth, Co Kildare.