FG Leaving Cert plan will hurt Irish

ENDA KENNY has again insisted that Irish should be removed as a compulsory subject from the Leaving Certificate.

Does he also propose to take this route with Maths? Irish students have been shown to struggle with Maths yet the consensus is that the curriculum should be reformed, not that the subject be made optional.

With 40% of marks in the Leaving Cert going on the oral Irish exam next year, I would like to see this reform given a chance. The Ukrainian writer Pavlychko warned in 1989 that “where a language disappears there you have the disappearance also of the national structure and the national spirit. In trying to save the Ukrainian language we are saying that we are trying to save a nation’s memory and a nation’s future”.