Madam, – Andreas Hess (Opinion, October 31st) urges Irish intellectuals, not only economists, to produce new thinking about the present and future of Irish society and politics. Has he reflected on the obstacles to their doing this in a sustained and adequate manner in this Republic?
There is no weekly or monthly magazine of ideas or any approximate equivalent on radio or television. The existing mass media have been engaged in an intellectual dumbing down. Notably, in their selecting of Irish writings for discussion and celebration, they attend only to the fictive kind – prose fiction, poetry and plays – ignoring Irish works of creative thought about human realities. Meanwhile, book publishers and State funding of creative writing practise a similar discrimination.
It is not an environment in which new thinking can develop or flourish. – Yours, etc,