All this talk about Irish is rubbish

The view in your editorial (Throwing good money after bad? Mar 13) is built on the supposed fact “that we spend something around €1bn a year just teaching Irish.”

This figure is rubbish.

What’s the annual budget for the Department of Education and how could it be claimed that the teaching of Irish could account for such a high proportion of it? It is absurd to suggest that €1bn a year could be saved from the education budget by scrapping Irish.