IF we as a nation want to reclaim our language, the best thing we could do is to offer students schooled through English a high points course in purely conversational Irish.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern says we’ve now ‘emerged from the shadow of the gunman,’ and his party, after a lapse of 35 years, wants to reclaim and commemorate ‘the real spirit’ of 1916 with a military parade.

IF the Official Languages Act was passed in the British parliament due to pressure from Northern nationalists, wouldn’t we all be praising their achievements?

THE more I look at the route the M3 is to take through the Tara/Skyrne Valley, the more outraged I become.

I WOULD find a coalition of Sinn Féin (love of country) the Green Party (love of the environment) and Labour (love of the workers) more palatable than if Sinn Féin were to share power with Fianna Fáil - whose only motivation, it would seem, is greed.

PRESIDENT Bush can’t genuinely expect us to believe that he is pro-life while he continues to urge his army on to kill for America and die for freedom.

ROSSA Ó SNODAIGH (Irish Examiner letters, July 19) asserts that smokers are addicts and therefore should have ‘no choice’ regarding the scientifically unsound smoking ban.

TOO many ads degrade men just to appeal to women buyers. One that I heard on a radio station in Dublin asserts that “a leather handbag around your arm is like a good looking man, only it doesn’t talk back.”

WOULD it be too cynical to presume that by taking so long to agree its implementation, by advertising the exorbitant costs and by delaying its construction in business areas and local communities, perhaps it was Fianna Fáil’s and Séamus Brennan’s intention all along to turn Luas into the civic annoyance it has become in order to make any such future public transport initiatives so unattractive that there would be no wish to spend public funds on them?

I WONDER whether the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, will call a national day of mourning when the Iraqi civilian death toll reaches 9/11 proportions..

BERTIE is not concealing his leanings very well.

WHEN the people of the world speak, as they did last Saturday, it behoves all elected representatives to enact policies that reflect those views.

BERTIE baffles me.

MR BLIX, the UN weapons inspector, might be more successful in finding weapons of mass destruction if he spent a day in Shannon.