Sir, – May I commend the National Museum of Ireland and the HSE for both their “lack of will” and “lack of co-operation” with regard to recommendations issued by the Irish Language Commissioner. (“State bodies reported over failures on Irish”, July 8th).
Given the bad press that many of our State-funded bodies receive, I am delighted to see that at least some of our public servants are unwilling to waste taxpayers’ money on unnecessary extravagances. According to the article, among the complaints made to the Commissioner was one that the HSE had not posted swine flu warnings in Irish. Surely, the vast majority of taxpayers would wish to see HSE funds being spent on improving conditions for patients rather than using scarce resources to translate and produce publications and notices in Irish?
Although I have an enormous amount of respect for the Irish language, I urge the Government to act to change legislation in order to ensure that public funds are not being used to please the small minority of citizens who are Irish- language fanatics. – Yours, etc,