Madam, - Issues of national language policy are moving up the agenda of all European governments. Whether it is concern with fluency and literacy in stated languages, maintenance of minority languages, learning foreign languages, coping with the languages of immigrants or a combination of these issues, the need for specialised national research and monitoring centres is now universally recognised.
While many countries are consolidating, developing and integrating their research capacities in these areas, the Minister for Education and Science in Ireland appears intent on moving in the opposite direction. The decision to discontinue funding for Ireland's national linguistics research institute, Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann (ITÉ), effectively forces its immediate closure. The team of specialist researchers and valuable databases assembled after substantial state investment will be dispersed, and current programmes terminated in mid-stream. Even on crude cost-effectiveness calculations this action, and the manner of its implementation, seems to us indefensible.
The Irish language promotion enterprise has unique characteristics and other countries have learned valuable lessons from your efforts. The considerable academic interest internationally in the Irish language maintenance effort in recent decades, however, has arisen in large part from ITÉ's excellent work.
We believe Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann is an irreplaceable social, educational, and linguistic resource and its value in terms of its contribution nationally and internationally greatly exceeds the modest funding it has received.
It would be an extraordinary waste of resources and talent to abandon its prestigious programme of research and to disperse its academic staff. - Yours, etc.,
SUZANNE ROMAINE, Merton Professor of English Language, University of Oxford,
BERNARD SPOLSKY, Professor Emeritus, Bar-Ilan University, Israel,
MIQUEL STRUBELL, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona,
JOSHUA FISHMAN, Professor Emeritus, Yeshiva University, New York, US.