Madam, – When copyright in our national anthem expires at the end of next year (Front page, May 5th), it will not be the first time this has happened. A 50-year copyright term was in force in 1992 on Peadar Kearney’s 50th anniversary, and the anthem entered the public domain at the end of that year.
A subsequent EU Directive required Ireland to extend copyright to life plus 70 years, and as a consequence to revive numerous expired copyrights including those of Peadar Kearney and others such as James Joyce, which we duly did in July 1995.
The expiry of copyright is a necessity sooner or later and most countries manage very well with public domain national anthems. It is true that the US, UK and France have seen protests against unconventional interpretations of their public domain anthems, eg, The Star-Spangled Banner distorted by Jimi Hendrix, God Save the Queen with protest lyrics by The Sex Pistols, and La Marseillaise sung à la reggae by Serge Gainsbourg. Nevertheless time has shown that on the whole such reinterpretation adds to a nation’s culture and does not dilute the popularity and respect shown by the majority for the original versions. – Yours, etc,