Sir, - I agree wholeheartedly with D. Breathnach July 11) that NTL has not administered its full responsibilities to provide high quality European programming for the citizens of this nation. However, he strongly suggests that Ireland is a country shamefully ignorant of other European cultures because of supposedly poor knowledge of continental languages. I disagree.
He mentions how the National Theatre treats the Irish people for the umpteenth time to renditions of Big Maggie and The Playboy of the Western World, thus implying that the National Theatre has no sense of continental culture. A few months ago, I was in the National Theatre and saw the play, Mann ist Mann, by Bertolt Brecht. Performers had come all the way over from Berlin to treat Irish audiences to a foreign culture. The play was conducted entirely in German, with English subtitles.
D. Breathnach complains that current issues of foreign newspapers are hard to come by here. Has he mentioned anything about how easy it is for people with computers to simply log on to the Internet and get the current news in a newspaper in any language at all?
Has he mentioned that in every Eason's shop, there is a current edition of the main European newspapers? Also, has D. Breathnach mentioned that new programmes are underway in schools to increase student knowledge of EU culture, such as school tours to language exhibitions? Has he mentioned that more and more schools use audio language computer programmes for school use, which was never there years before?
It seems to me that D. Breathnach is using old-fashioned facts and only a few modern ones relating to NTL that Irish people are kept ignorant of European culture. This is a country of fast growing technology, and thus with fast growing knowledge.
Ireland is a great, active and proud country in this Union. To suggest it's citizens are ignorant of other continental cultures is a grave mistake. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin O'Mahony, Foxrock, Dublin 18.