Sir, – Kitty Holland’s report (“Almost like a tsunami now: Irish language draws younger voters to Catherine Connolly”, October 19th), contains the reported comment of one such young person – “I did hear Heather Humphrey doesn’t speak Irish. I feel as the leader of the country you should know the national language. Imagine the head of state in Spain couldn’t speak Spanish.”

With all due respect, this sort of argument really doesn’t hold water, since it fails to distinguish between the everyday spoken language of the vast mass of the population, and the aim to reclaim a former spoken language as somehow superior.

Let me put it this way: if the president were to speak only Irish, she would fail to be able to communicate her ideas, hopes and aspirations to most of the country.

We have to recognise reality. Since independence a century ago, we have persisted in the fantasy that Irish can somehow be resurrected as “the national language”, that is, a language in everyday use by most of the citizenry.

The best the language enthusiasts can hope for is to see it gradually spread. But without really drastic compulsion it’s going to take a very long time. And there’s one other thing. In the context of the pious utterances of Irish nationalists in favour of Irish unity, the language issue is highly divisive and exclusionary in Northern Ireland. Its aggressive promotion does little to promote intercommunity harmony, since (however misguided) it is seen as threatening the Anglophone culture and traditions of those who support the Union.

And we need all the commonalities we can muster if unity were ever to become a possibility. Our common language – English – is one of those. Ireland, north and south, can and should take pride in our enormous contribution to English literature – for a small country, we have and continue to have a hugely disproportionate influence on one of the great languages of the world.

By contrast, Irish is largely an interior lang