Sir, - In an Irishman's Diary (May 22nd) Kevin Myers graphically exposed a Freudian charade. At long last, a distinguished journalist has displayed the intrepidity to pop his head above the pseudo patriotic parapets of xenophobia and had the effrontery to "call a spade a spade."
He illuminated factors of intellectual and economic relevance, e.g., (1) after 20 years of Radio na Gaeltachta broadcasting, the audience is only one per cent of those over 15 years of age in our population; (2) it will cost RTE £5 million to broadcast 60 minutes a day of Irish language programmes; (3) the only beneficiaries will be the 200 bearded zealots in Comrade Higgins's constituency. They shall enjoy well paid positions for non productive, innocuously intellectual and economically fictitious contributions to society.
If Kevin Myers considers "Teilifis de Lorean" such a ludicrously frivolous aberration, he must axiomatically consider Comrade Higgins's Teilifis na Gaeilge concept a sleepwalker's incursion into cloud cuckoo land. This misguided ideological concept shall cost £15 million to establish, and thereafter an estimated £20 million a year to operate.
Yet, despite hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers hard earned money having been recklessly squandered on the futile promotion of the Irish language over the past 74 years, less than 10 per cent of the population understand colloquial Irish. So why set up an all Irish language TV station at enormous cost to taxpayers, when only a miniscule minority may ever watch it?
At this point in time, what really disturbs me and about one million other taxpayers and TV licence payers is that we shall all be ignominiously "screwed" to defray the profligate cost of our contemporary Don Quixote's white elephant. - Yours, etc.,
Wilton Avenue, Bishopstown,
Cork.