Sir, - Reading Mr Doorley's letter (June 4th) irritated me sufficiently enough to force me to reply to his completely misguided and factually incorrect opinion and once again to defend the launch of Teilifis na Gaeilge.
Firstly, let me correct his unfortunate statement that Irish has not been the language of Dublin for the best part of a thousand years. The truth is that, up until as recently as 1860, every single county in Ireland contained native born speakers of Irish, including Dublin. The influence of the Irish language on modern-day "Dublinese" can be seen in such common phrases as "I do be . . ." the present continuous tense, not existent in English but very much part of Irish e.g., "Bim".
It is ridiculous statements like Mr Doorley's that Irish speakers have to contend with all the time and I for one am getting sick and tired of them. I am sick and tired of hearing meaningless utterances like "O, I'm all for the Irish language but . . . " I'm sick and tired of people continuously harping on about the cost of Teilifis na Gaeilge, and I'm sick and tired of people like Mr Jonathan Philbin Bowman and his ilk downmouthing the Irish language and portraying us all as religious fanatics, alcoholics, farmers or militant republicans.
It is about time we in this country went beyond the "O, I'm all for the Irish language" attitude. If we are all for it, then let's do something about it. I'm not willing to accept any more mere tokenisms like the odd "A chara" and, "Is mise le meas", or the annual St Patrick's Day use of Irish by RTE's continuity announcers. It's about time that we did something long term and capital for the Irish language and Teilifis na Gaeilge is such a project.
Irish speakers should be able to go through their lives through the medium of Irish just as English speakers can. It's about time we were made feel as though we are more than just unwanted irritants and our right as the speakers of the first official language of this country were protected.
The reason why Irish seems so, alien to Mr Doorley is because it is people like him who have created in society an atmosphere where people are genuinely embarrassed to use whatever Irish they have, for fear of being looked at as if they have two heads. Hopefully Teilifis na Gaeilge will help change this situation and we will be able to spend more time talking in the Irish language than talking about the Irish language. - Yours, etc.,
Biscayne,
Mullach Ide,
Co Bhaile Atha Cliath.