What about the 83%?

We re-published a letter response to an article by Sunday Times correspondent, Brenda Power recently, Coimisinéir not a child of Celtic Tiger! This Sunday a response to the letter has been published from a gentleman in Limerick.

We felt moved to write a response but the letter section was not published in last Sunday's edition- probably due to the Christmas holidays. The basic thoughts in our letter are below!

I fear that Mr Hugh O'Neill ("Outnumbered", 22/12/2013) misread my letter. I did not claim that 6000 people from the Gaeltacht had written complaints to the Commissionéir. Our letter did not claim that the 4.5million outside the Gaeltacht did not have language rights. Indeed had he interpreted the letter correctly he would have realised that almost 83% of the complaints received by the Coimisinéir's office were from outside the Gaeltacht. I do not know how he knows that the total number of Polish Speakers exceeds the total population of the Gaeltacht.  The Polish Language itself is, I understand, strong, and used extensively, even by their Government Departments, in their noble homeland. A situation, sadly, not replicated in the homeland of the Irish Language. Yours etc

I have since learned that the Polish language is used by about 40 million people in Poland and in some of the adjacent countries. And that despite being subsumed and dissolved as a political entity throughout the 19th and early 20th century. 
Niech żyje język polski!
Niech żyje język irlandzki!