From Micheal O Bearra

KEVIN RAFTER's article (Comment, 8 July) on the money being spent on the Gaeilge effort, 500m per annum according to recent figures, is most interesting. However, Kevin is simply missing the point. We never had compulsory Irish, and Irish was never force-fed to anybody.

What we did have, and in many ways still do have, is the compulsory cupla focal and the compulsory exam. Indeed, despite the above policy, we are now in a position where 25-30% of our people speak Irish competently. According to the 2002 census, 340,000 people use Irish daily, with 1.57 million claiming to speak Irish.

According to Census 2006, 1.6 million (41% of the population) claim an ability to speak Irish. According to the 1991 census in the six counties, 200,000 there speak Irish.

This 500m would be far better spent getting down to serious cases on the revival of Irish, as the real spoken language of Ireland, by making one phone call. That phone call is to the Israeili Embassy in Dublin, and ask the only nation in recent history to engage in language revival: 'Tell us please, how do you do it?' Very simple, but very harsh and extremely tough.

Additionally, it is, in an increasingly multicultural Ireland, generally speaking, a most welcome and positive development that we need our own language as a 'glue' to bind us all together so that the words 'Eireannach' and 'Gaeilgeoir' become interchangeable, regardless of one's cultural, ethnic, national, racial or religious background.

Micheal O Bearra, An Spideal, Gaillimh.

Iarnrod Eireann don't care about customers

From Mary Boland

I MADE a return train journey from Dublin to Galway yesterday and was lucky to survive it. I took the 7am train to Galway and had my breakfast on board. I booked the 1pm return journey and my ticket clearly stated that there would be a snack bar on board.

Only after the train left the station was an announcement made that there would be no food service on board.

Two hours into the journey I became faint due to lack of food or water and was only able to get off the train with the assistance of other passengers.

I am six months pregnant and if I knew that there would be no food or drink on board in advance I would have purchased some beforehand as my last meal was on the 7am train.

Why do state bodies such as Iarnrod Eireann consistently have no regard for customer service or needs? They would not last a week in the private sector.

Mary Boland RGN, Shanlee, Castlecourt, Clancy's Strand, Limerick.

The Druidic alternative

From Michael McGrath

MODERN-DAY Druids work to heal humanity's alienation from nature. Druidry, rather than being a religion, is a particular way of working with and understanding the natural world and healing the planet. We offer humanity a way out of the industrial wasteland we have created by exploiting nature, and into a new age of naturalism. We now present an expression of Druidry which is appropriate and relevant to the 21st century. Druidry has a much more grounded quality than a lot of New Age thinking. Druidry is connected to the earth, our heritage and our roots.

Druids could well be called The First Green Party; indeed our ancient Druids would have been part of the government of ancient Ireland. We now propose to grow to challenge the political Green Party, indeed the synthetic 'Greens' of all parties whose members and followers are all so disenchanted.

Indeed, fighting for an ideal Green Future, we intend to transform global consciousness with our radical environmental plans and practices to tackle climate change especially.

Mother Earth is crying out for help and while she continues to bestow blessing after blessing on mankind, humanity continues to destroy her. To neglect responsibility is to stifle creativity. Humanity's right brain, the area of mysticism, sensuality and synthesis, has shrivelled up over the past 300 years, bringing a divide between body and spirit and preventing us from seeing the whole. We look to our ancient Druids, whose wisdom embraced the cosmos, for inspiration. By resurrecting human consciousness, we will resurrect Mother Earth. Then humanity will be able to recognise the interdependency of all life, to reconnect to the universe. Now is the time, now is the place, now is the occasion, now is the moment of breakthrough, when spirituality and ecology shall merge as we journey from mastery to mystery.

Faith may move mountains, but only the clarity of our vision will move them to the right places. In 1967, Arthur Koestler wrote: "Nature has let us down, God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out." Forty years later, we say: "We have let nature down, we have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out even faster!"

Michael McGrath, 23 Delaford Lawn, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.

Diarmuid has Bertie right on the nail

From Margaret McGrath

JUST had to write to congratulate Diarmuid Doyle on his column (Sunday Tribune, 8 July) . . . he really has Bertie right on the nail and his cronies . . . failtastic. Started reading it at midnight on my way to bed but just couldn't put it down. Great . . . give him a raise!

Margaret McGrath, Deerpark Road, Cashel, Co Tipperary.

Linking our war dead to Britain's past not on

From Tom Cooper

THE National Day of Commemoration, which was held on Sunday 8 July in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, to honour those Irish who died in foreign wars and in service with the United Nations, was a most solemn and moving event.

The attendance of President McAleese and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, along with politicians from all the main political parties and leading churchmen in Ireland, reflected the importance attached to such a commemoration. Those who died were remembered and honoured with the dignity and respect such a sacrifice warranted.

However, for many years now, there has been an insidious and persistent campaign aimed at forcing the full participation of the Irish state in the annual Remembrance Sunday ceremonies of the Royal British Legion. Every November we see controversy generated in the Irish media designed to embarrass the Irish government.

Irish society in the south has been repeatedly accused of failing to honour the memory of the 35,000 Irish in British uniform who were slaughtered in the socalled Great War of 1914-1918.

This annual agitation is being orchestrated by a small, vociferous but highly influential coterie of politicians, media people and others who have links with bodies such as the Royal British Legion, and appear to be working to a definite agenda.

In an attempt to appease these agitators, the Irish state established the National Day of Commemoration. It is entirely proper that appropriate ceremonies be held to commemorate the many thousands who went away and never returned.

What is not acceptable, however, is the efforts at conferring a new respectability upon the British Army under the guise of honouring the Irish war dead.

Irish nationalists must confront these agitators because there is more involved here than simply commemorating the Irish war dead. They should be confronted on the historical record: the unanswerable indictment of carnage and mass slaughter. Their campaign should also be seen as a veiled propagandist attack on separatist Irish nationhood.Perhaps the greatest nonsense arising from this whole issue is the assumption that Armistice Day can be officially commemorated by a state that honours its heroes of liberation every Easter.

Who would entertain the idea that the Easter week volunteers and the British Army can be given recognition at official level and receive parity of esteem in state ceremonies? To do so would make the Irish state look like some sort of devolved British colonial administration.

Tom Cooper, 18 Kickham Street, Kilkenny.

Some of world's top beaches in Donegal

From Kathleen Duggan

I WOULD like to refer to the top 10 Irish beaches in the Tribune Magazine's 1 July edition.

I am living in Donegal for the past 25 years, originally from Rosslare, and was dismayed to see that you only voted one beach in Donegal in your top 10 list and not only that, that one beach was number nine.

I could not believe that no other beach in Donegal was any higher than number nine. I live close to Marble Hill Beach in Port-na-Blagh, Dunfanaghy (a Blue Flag beach) and it has much more beauty than some of the other beaches in your list.

In fact Ballymastocker Bay in Portsalon has been listed as the second most beautiful beach in the world next to the Seychelles.

I would love to know how this list came about? I don't doubt that the beaches listed are among the best in the country but I do feel that more recognition should have been given to Donegal beaches!

Kathleen Duggan, by email