Sir, - The Minister of State for the Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Mr Eamonn O Cuiv, chides me (February 5th) for my views on the Government's Irish language programme which he sees as intolerant and, as such, contrary to the need to promote pluralism, diversity, and understanding within the community.
Well: he chides me unfairly. I cannot imagine any reason to object to people speaking Irish, any more than I would object to them speaking Mandarin or Swahili. Nor am I intolerant of special interest groups in society, such as parents who want schools with an Irish-language ethos for their children. All such groups benefit our society as a whole, and add to the quantum of our culture.
What I am intolerant of is something quite different. It is giving special privileges to one of those groups in particular. To give just one example, it is wrong that Leaving Certificate students who answer a paper through Irish rather than through English thereby get more marks. This is corruption within the marking system and it should stop.
And anyway, in the context of Irish, how can any Minister convincingly claim to be an advocate of tolerance as long as the State continues with the compulsory imposition of Irish on English-speaking pupils in school, for all of their years in school, regardless of their needs, aptitudes, or their own desire to study something else? Such a claim is impossible, because everybody knows that the revival project has always depended on compulsion, the opposite of tolerance. This being true, no advocate of the revival can speak publicly with authority on the subject of tolerance, no matter what place that virtue may occupy within his personal hierarchy of values.
Finally, regarding Mr O Cuiv's Language Bill - let us wait and see what it contains when it is published, and then draw our conclusions. - Yours, etc.,
Donal Flynn, Breffni Terrace, Sandycove, Co Dublin.