Should Irish be optional in school? - Let’s talk about our language

The playwright John Millington Synge had a great grá for the Irish language, once declaring: “There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.”

That may be so, yet debates about attempts to revive it have been anything but. The latest stems from a review of the Leaving Certificate by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, which has found that many students think Irish should be an optional subject.