The Irish language - Throwing good money after bad?

The Irish language has played a central role in shaping our culture.

Its influence is so deep-rooted that it has nurtured Hiberno-English — an Irish solution to an English imposition. Because of our history it, like other suppressed languages, has been afforded a political status, an assumed patriotic integrity, replicated in other countries once colonised. Whether this is permanent or even relevant today is an open question. Despite that, and despite the great emotional and almost spiritual attachment some Irish people feel for the language, it has not been central to Irish life for over a century.

Nevertheless, the 2011 census recorded a 7.1% increase in the number of self-declared Irish speakers. Some 1.77m people said they could speak Irish. However, and this seems more pertinent, only 1.8% used it every day outside of the education system.