A Chara, Readers of the Irish Times will have viewed with concern the letter submitted to its columns on March 13th by world-renowned scholars of early Irish, concerning the downgrading of that subject in UCD. As members of the Central Council of the Classical Association of Ireland, we wish to point out that the anxiety of the signatories to that letter is shared by a much wider cultural constituency than might at first be apparent. For nearly a thousand years, all documents written in this island were composed either in early Irish or in medieval Latin. Yet there is no longer a single dedicated teaching post in medieval Latin anywhere in Ireland, either North or South, whereas UCD used to have a Chair in it, and there was a lectureship in Queen's University, Belfast. (In fact, the latter institution no longer offers even Classical Latin to students as a degree subject). If the systematic teaching of early Irish is to be threatened as well, this will deprive our young people of the opportunity for direct access to the only propositional sources of knowledge deriving from a millennium of their country's history. As our Association has had occasion to point out in the past, the current generation of University decision-makers is the first ever to consider it acceptable for their society to be expected to flourish without such umbilical links to its past. How likely are they to be right? Is sinne, le meas, Professor ANNA CHAHOUD, Representative, Trinity College Dublin Dr JOHN CURRAN, Representative, Classical Association of Northern Ireland MICHAEL T. DONNELLAN, Representative, Limerick Branch BRIAN FARLEY, Elected Council Member Dr RACHEL FINNEGAN, Representative, South-East Branch TOM GIBLIN, Elected Council Member Dr ANTHONY HARVEY, Chair Dr EDWARD HERRING, Representative, NUI Galway CARMEL McCALLUM-BARRY, Representative, University College Cork Dr ANN MOHR, Representative, Galway Branch Dr MAEVE O'BRIEN, Secretary, and Representative, NUI Maynooth BRIAN O'CONNELL, Representative, Dublin Branch DANIEL O'CONNOR, Representative, CAI Teachers JENNIFER O'DONOGHUE, Representative, Cork Branch DESMOND O'TOOLE, Student Representative PATRICK RYAN, Treasurer Professor ANDREW SMITH, Representative, Publications Committee Dr SIMON SPENCE, PRO & Membership Secretary Dr DAVID WOODS, Editor, Classics Ireland Dr JOAN WRIGHT, Elected Council Member-