1.75m able to speak Irish — but only a few of us do

More than 1.75m people can speak Irish — but fewer than 74,000 do so every day outside of the education system.

The figures emerging from Census 2016 data show that there are 13,000 fewer people able to speak the first language than five years earlier.

Although 40% can do so, 418,420 people said they never speak it, and another 558,608 do so only within the education system.