Madam, - I have read with great interest your report of November 24th containing a picture of Seán Ó Neachtain, MEP, our only Gaeilgeoir MEP, that the Government proposes to ask the EU to formally recognise Irish as an official working EU language. What absolute bilge!
The money that will be spent on the effort, would be far, far better spent getting down to serious cases on the revival of Irish, as the spoken language of Ireland. Flowing naturally and logically from that, official, de facto recognition in the EU will come. However, we must make one and only one simple phone call.
That phone call is to the Israeli Embassy in Dublin to ask the only nation, in recent history, to engage in language revival, "Tell us please, how do you do it?" Then we must, basically imitate the Israelis. Very simple, very harsh and most extremely tough. - Yours, etc.,
MÍCHEÁL Ó BÉARRA, An Spideal, Gaillimh.