I read Foinse this morning and the letters section contains a letter in English from the Constable of the PSNI. This is the second such incident in the last few weeks of a letter sent in to Foinse with no attempt to translate it into Irish. As the PSNI had public meetings in Irish in Derry and Belfast last year the Constable had no excuse not to request his letter be translated into Irish there clearly are Irish speakers in the PSNI.

Foinse seems to have a policy of letters in English being published about ANY subject under the sun not even related to the Irish language. Letters in Irish are not published in English language newspapers yet people who have no Irish can have theirs published in Foinse. The whole purpose of having a letters page in Foinse is so opinions can be expressed in the Irish language and this policy is undermining this and I can say this is official policy to give people with little or no Irish the chance to express their views in the letters page as per confirmation with the newspaper. So theoretically I could write about NAMA or the Civil Service strike or the weather in English and they would publish it.

Is anyone else browned off with this official policy which is a pity as I enjoy most of the articles and the layout of the paper is excellent.

I think it is a good policy. The whole point of the new incarnation of Foinse is to extend the reach of Irish beyond the (small) community of fluent speakers, to those whose reading is - in some cases - well ahead of their writing.

Printing the letters as sent encourages those people.

It also shows that the person who wrote is engaged in the Irish media -- he is coming to them. If the goal of the society is bilingualism, then having letters in either language is going to be a more common occurrence. Also I think it unwise to follow the example of some English media which pretend that Irish doesn't exist, and to then pretend that English is not in Ireland. I think that hard line is less tenable these days, and probably destructive to the overall growth of Irish.