One million (occasional) Irish speakers

MORE than a million men, women and children are able to speak Irish but rarely or never do so, new census figures showed yesterday.

Although the numbers of people able to speak Irish rose 5% to 1.66 million in last year’s census, just 635,000 speak the “cúpla focail” regularly, while just over a million rarely or never use the tongue.

Of the country’s 4.3 million adults and children, the number of those able to speak “as Gaeilge” is now 40.8% of the population, down from 41.9% at the last census in 2002.