Ray D'Arcy

Or half of them have learning difficulties.

So a report published this week by Conor Na Gaeilge and written by a professor in Dublin City University notes that almost half of students who get an exemption from studying Irish on the basis of a learning difficulty go on to take a modern language for the leave insert.

What are they getting at there?

So why are so many people seeking?

Now, obviously, there are genuine cases.

The implication in a lot of stuff I read is that some of them aren't so genuine.

So why are people trying to avoid Irish at all costs to the point where they're going off to get a diagnosis?

Well, there's a letter by Clare Greeley

to the Times today and she says, Sir, it's not today or indeed yesterday we have read about the increasing numbers of secondary students seeking exemptions in Irish.

Why is the number far greater in this subject than in any other languages?

The answer is very simple, says Clare.

It's a mixture of both the prescribed material that is to be taught in the classroom coupled by an exam that is far more demanding and arduous on the student.

The situation could very easily be reversed by bringing the Leave and Cert exam in Irish into sync with French, German, Spanish and Italian, whereby the emphasis is on the communicative – don't get me to say that again – the communicative aspects of the language as opposed to the heavy-weighted paper on literature.

As a teacher of Leaving Start Irish for the last 35 years, I acknowledge that there is a beauty and worthiness in both Irish poetry and prose, but let those areas be examined as a separate subject in the same way as English is examined in the A-level system, i.e.

English language and English literature, separate subjects.

A simple enough remedy to reverse the current demise.

Clare Greeley, Ratgar, Dublin 6.

And I know the Irish-speaking community are buoyed up by the kneecap phenomenon, as some people are calling it, on Colleen Kuhn, etc.

And it looks like that our language is enjoying a purple patch.

However, if Levenser students are...