Sir, - It is really astonishing that in a publication supposedly devoted to education, and therefore to the betterment of the knowledge and understanding of the population, the vacancy for a president of Galway University should be discussed, in the report by Yvonne Healy (E & L, February 8th) in such prejudiced terms.
Surely the independent and sovereign Irish State is entitled to have at least one of the several universities here favour the ancestral language of the country, the chosen language of thousands of our citizens and the native language of the adjacent Gaeltacht? The suggestion that those academics who are fluent in Irish would not be capable of operating "globally" or at "world class", whatever that pseudo-modernist crap means anyway, is insulting and extremely offensive - not only to any Irish-speaking applicants for the post, but also the community of Irish-speakers everywhere, including those in European universities and on other continents where excellent departments of Celtic Studies exist. Whatever the accomplishments of these so-called "world class" individuals, the Irish-speaking person has one more.
This question would not arise in, say, France or Germany, where anyone aspiring to take over a university would not succeed if deficient in the knowledge of the languages of those countries. The fact that your reporter and her anonymous "sources" raise it exposes a revenant, colonial mind-set and a pathetic inferiority complex made all the more vacuous by being shamelessly paraded as some sort of concern for academic standards.
The other complaint - that the university chose not to use some "international" (i.e. Mother England and ex-colonies) - employment agency to do its recruiting stems from the same anglo-monoglot syndrome. What is so superior about some employment agency? It would be a poor university indeed that was incapable of doing its own research if it so chose.
Your reporter's suggestion that the University is being "restrictive" by asking for competency in the Irish language is utter nonsense. It is the anglo-monoglots who are the restrictive types, wishing to deprive us of the connection to our ancestral Irish culture and our entitlement to use the Irish language as much, or as little, or any way we want. - Yours, etc., Seamas Ratigan,
Dublin 8.