Students call for changes to Leaving Cert Irish

Secondary-school students have called for Irish to be made an optional subject in the Leaving Certificate.

They’ve said the fact that students are forced to study the subject is creating a siege mentality in young people's minds.

The union has also called for the syllabus to be made more practical in order to encourage those who do want to study Irish.

Nikolai Trigoub-Rotman, the President of the Union of Secondary Students, said today: “The reason Irish is quite unpopular among students is because the course is not interesting.”

He added: “The Government have made it a compulsory subject but they haven't analysed the course and made it practical for students nowadays.”