From Gina Byrne

WITH her perceptions about the public rushing to judge news stories, Claire Byrne neatly sidesteps an important issue (Comment & Analysis, 23 September).

Someone on her Breakfast Show team allowed Councillor Kavanagh up on air to express his views about the Travelling Community. Let's say another caller had rung up to sound off about gay people for example, or black people. Would he have been given similar airtime? I'm sure some of the ensuing contributions could have been just as lively. But the point is, we the crowd can only judge, opine, etc, based on what the media powers-that-be decide we should be fed. Or overfed, in the case of the McCanns, on the poorest quality diet imaginable. The dogs on the Portuguese streets may have been concocting the rumours and speculation, but it was media dogs who presented them to us as facts.

I don't think the Northern Rock crisis is as strong an example. When it comes to your very own hard-won, hard-earned or hard-hoarded cash, it wouldn't take a media frenzy to make you want to whip it straight back out. Mind you, the shots of the assembling crowds on Harcourt Street probably helped the undecided to scramble off the fence.

But as for Jose Mourinho? We were treated to scenes of grown men in football jerseys, standing outside Stamford Bridge, actually crying into their scarves. Now surely that was the real story.

Gina Byrne, Annaholty, Birdhill, Co Tipperary.

'As Gaeilge' hypocrisy plagues Irish politics

From Michael Ring TD

I REFER to your front-page headline of last week reading "Did you hear the one about the spokesman for Irish who can't speak as Gaeilge?" and related articles in your newspaper. I am curious as to why most of your reportage on this matter was in English, with the exception of some questions in Irish put to me by your columnist, Una Mullally.

The journalist appears to suggest that fluency in Irish is a prerequisite for my new portfolio, yet her extensive commentary on this subject is not written in Irish.

Hypocrisy regarding the Irish language has plagued Irish politics for 75 years and is not something I would encourage.

I am intrigued that she translates my surname as 'Fainne'. While the common noun 'ring' translates into Irish as 'fainne', the proper noun (ie the name) Ring derives from the surname O Rinn. In this country, we are only too well aware of the widespread mistranslation of Irish surnames which took place throughout the last few centuries even on an official level, and which illustrates the proposition . . . 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. I look forward to improving my own Irish, ideally in the course of civilised conversation classes where, if I do not understand words spoken, the speaker is prepared to explain or clarify their meaning.

Micheal O Rinn, Teachta

Dala agus Urlabhrai Fhine Gael i Gnothai Pobail, Tuaithe agus Gaeltachta.

From Micheal O Beara

YOUR report of a particular Gaeltacht spokesman who speaks no Gaeilge, plus your journalist's interview with him, is most interesting. It merely goes to prove my contention that we never had compulsory Irish, and Irish was never force-fed to anybody. Now we have a Gaeltacht spokesman, a retired Minister for the Gaeltacht, and a Taoiseach who speak no Gaeilge. The question 'What good is Irish?' was never answered.

While discussing this issue with an Israeli, he said: "But you Irish did not go for language replacement, " which is quite true. Indeed, by 1930, primary schoolteachers were asking school inspectors what the object of the exercise was: Was it cupla focal or language replacement?

Additionally, the money that is being spent on the Gaeilge effort, 500m per annum, according to recent figures, would be far, 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 Israeli Embassy in Dublin (012309400), 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 most extremely tough.

It is, in an increasingly multi-cultural 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 Beara, An Spideal, Gaillimh.

From Kevin Shannon

UNA MULLALLY's swipe at Michael Ring's lack of Irish may have been a little bit amusing; had her 90-100 odd words in Irish not been riddled with glaring grammatical errors and shameful misspellings.

The noun 'ring' is indeed rendered in Irish as 'fainne'.

The surname 'Ring' is probably an anglicisation of the surname O Rinn, which is something completely different, and something that deserves much more discussion than we have time for here.

And it gets worse. Creaky grammar (gnothai chomhphobal, tuathuil agus gaeltacht [sic]), and glaring misspellings (I dtus baire [sic], ar chur [sic] ar bith, an bfhuil [sic], beaganin [sic]), do nothing for the credibility of Una's article; nor does the tone of her article suggest that she is particularly concerned about anything other than an opportunity to ridicule the Fine Gael spokesman . . . and if a quick snigger at the Irish language can be thrown in . . .then all the better. Sad really.

Is fearr siol fealla na siol fonoide.

Kevin Shannon, Beal Feirste, Co Aontroma.

Mahon tribunal not just about Ahern

From Maurice O'Connell

THE learned judges of the Mahon tribunal will write what they will write. Months or years from now.

Be that as it may, we are witnessing, with the hideous viscosity and impartial brutality of a slow-motion nightmare, a man floundering deeper and deeper into a quicksand of his own construction.

This is not high tragic drama; it is low farce scripted by Laurel and Hardy.

Common sense drives us inexorably to one of two common sense, immediate but not unfair, probable conclusions. Either he is trying, very unsuccessfully, to divert attention from 'something'. Or 'somebody'. Or he simply runs his own personal matters in a (more than slightly) fuzzy manner.

But this is not about a randomly selected private individual's personal matters. It is about the default thoughtprocesses of the Chief Executive of our national community . . . and the valuesystem predominant in his (actually 'our') government.

And, as Moriarty pointed out, euphemistically but succinctly in relation to the Haughey blank cheques, there are problems with his understanding of the groundrules which apply to the rest of us in this Republic.

Worse than that: what is being tested here, by proxy but clinically and through due process, is not just a servile and obsequious cabinet, not a oncegreat party (loyal and blind unto death), not naive or opportunistic allies lured by the Spider Ahern into his coalition web, not a few hundred voters who did their short-term sums and turned a blind eye to the real (sic) reality. They will all . . .in time . . . have their serious questions to answer before the bar of history.

This is about all of us. None of us is perfect and without sin. Yet it is about 'turning a blind eye', 'cutting corners', 'bending the rules'.

So long as 'the goods are delivered'. Or at the very least: some of the goods are delivered into some of the 'right' hands.

This is about the standards we expect . . . or tolerate . . . in a constitutional Republic. A Republic which aspires to the rule of law and appropriate practice so that all its children may be cherished equally. It is about the responsibility of free citizens. Won for us by bitter and honoured sacrifice.

Maurice O'Connell, Forge Park, Oakpark, Tralee, Co Kerry.

Threat to all Arab states as well as Israel

From John Lalor

IMAGINE, if you will, the present street protests in Rangoon, Burma, were instead held in Ramallah or Hebron.

Imagine if the Buddhist monks were instead PalestinianArabs. Imagine if the soldiers of the Burmese military junta were instead the Israeli Defence Forces soldiers.

Imagine if, the last time this was tried, 3,000 were butchered and many more injured and imprisoned.

Imagine, then, the worldwide protest rallies; imagine the economic and academic boycotts; imagine the UN emergency meetings; imagine the vilification of Israel.

One must ask: why so little interest in the truly brutalised people of the world. Imagine what the Burmese, Zimbabweans, Cubans, Sudanese, Tibetans, North Koreans, etc, think of the disparate concentration of anger on tiny Israel.

John Lalor, Ashdale Park, Terenure, Dublin 6W.