Dear Mary Coughlan...

I honestly have no idea why you are Minister for Education. I mean, when was the last time you went to school?...See, you can't remember. Exactly!

But the point of this letter is to complain about the Junior Certificate Gaeilge course, more specifically the poems. I like poetry. Well, not all of it: 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' doesn't exactly fill my heart with joy. But my copy of Fonn 3 contains this ridiculous excuse for a poem, translated from the Gaeilge:

The Ozone

I am the ozone

Here in the middle of the sky.

God made me long ago

To save you

From too much sun

And other ugly things.

I am telling you

To give care

To your neighbourhood,

To the world

Because you live there

And it depends on you.

Do not destroy anything

That you created

Take my advice

And you'll survive.

We will all survive

As we were meant to.

I'm not saying that I don't care about the environment, because I do. My family gets really annoyed with me about it sometimes. It's just a HORRIBLE poem. Perhaps if you improved the quality of your poems, students would be more enthusiastic about learning them? Because I don't know how I'm going to sit through this for the next couple of weeks...

Yours sincerely,

Eleanor Roscuro