A chara, - The vast sums about to be squandered on the indulgent promotion of Irish as a working language of the European Union will do nothing at all to help the language ("Brush up on your Gaeilge, EU warns Government", The Irish Times, October 13th).
There is nobody - literally, not a single person on the planet - who can read official documents more easily in Irish than in English. Genuine native speakers would be baffled by the neologisms required, and will only understand the English versions.
If the Government wanted to give real help to the language, then at a fraction of the cost it could give every secondary school student a grant to spend three weeks in the Gaeltacht, an experience which generates lifelong good feeling and attachment to Irish, and transforms it into something that the population can share with affection.
All this money and effort to produce documents that will never be read by anyone but the translators themselves is not only detrimental to the language itself; it is an immoral folly. - Is mise,
BARRY McCREA, Paris, France.