The official status of the Irish language has remained high in the Republic of Ireland from foundation. This reflects the dominance of the language in Irish cultural and social history until the nineteenth century and its role in Irish cultural identity. In 2022, strong recognition was added in Northern Ireland. In the 2022 Republic of Ireland census 1,873,997 people or 39.8% of the population in the Republic of Ireland said that they had some ability to speak Irish, out of an overall population of 5,149,139. In Northern Ireland 228,600 people (12.4%) have some ability in the Irish language according to the 2021 census for Northern Ireland, out of a population of 1,903,175 people. It has been found, however, that while ideological support for Irish is high, actual routine use is very low, and that there is very little or rare correlation between personal fluency in the language and the perceived value of Irish as an identity-marker. Nevertheless, the language benefits from the support of activists who continue to use it as a social and cultural medium.
On 13 June 2005, Irish was made an official language of the European Union, the new arrangements coming into effect on 1 January 2007. On 1 January 2022, Irish received full status as a working language of the EU joining the other 23 official languages of the EU. It is, however, among those least routinely spoken of the official languages of the European Union with there being only 1 Irish speaking MEP out of the total number of 13 Irish MEP's in the 2019–2024 European Parliament.
Traditional Irish speakers in the areas known as the Gaeltacht have usually been considered as the core speakers of the language. Their number, however, is diminishing, and some assert that they are being replaced in importance by fluent speakers outside the Gaeltacht, including both second-language speakers and a small minority who were raised and educated through Irish. Such speakers are predominantly urban dwellers.
Self-reported number of Irish speakers In Ireland
In the latest Irish census, of 2022, 1,873,997 people or 39.8% of the population of the Republic of Ireland claimed some ability to speak Irish, which was an increase of 6% compared to the 2016 census. However the number of daily Irish speakers in the state dropped by 2% compared to 2016, with 71,968 people in 2022 claiming to be daily Irish speakers. And there was a decrease from 16,199 people reported as speaking the language every day outside the education system in the Gaeltacht in 2016 to 15,360 in 2022. The 2022 census was the first to include a question on level of ability in the Irish language. Estimates of fully native Irish language speakers in Ireland range from 40,000 to 80,000.
Some 6,000 people (0.3%) in Northern Ireland claim to use Irish as their main home language according to the 2021 UK Census with 71,900 people being able to speak Irish (circa 4% of population) and 228,600 people overall in the state (12.4%) having some knowledge of the language.
Only 6,685 of the Republic of Ireland 2022 census forms were completed in Irish, down from 8,068 in 2016. In anecdotal input, Bank of Ireland has noted that fewer than 1% of their customers use the Irish language option on their banking machines.
Outside Ireland The number of Irish speakers outside Ireland cannot be readily verified. In the 2017-2021 American Community Survey, providing information on "languages spoken at home," the number of Irish speakers was given as 16,550 (with a margin of error of 1,246). In this year, Irish was not amongst the 15 most spoken languages of any state. There is no information readily available as to the number of Irish speakers in Australia. The same is true of England and Wales. Statistics on languages spoken at home (as gathered in the United States and Australia) give no indication of the number of speakers who use those languages in other contexts.
UNESCO's Atlas of World Languages
In 2021 UNESCO's Atlas of World Languages described the Irish language as "definitely endangered".
In the same report UNESCO estimated that there are between 20,000 and 40,000 Irish speakers in the world. This number of Irish speakers is similarly estimated by Google to be the approximate true number of Irish speakers in the world.
Trends in usage Decline of the Gaeltacht While the number of fluent urban speakers is rising (largely because of the growth of urban Irish-medium education), Irish in the Gaeltacht grows steadily weaker. The 2016 census showed that inhabitants of the officially designated Gaeltacht regions of Ireland numbered 96,090 people, down from 96,628 in the 2011 census. Of these, 66.3% said that they speak Irish, down from 68.5% in 2011; and only 21.4% or 20,586 people said they spoke Irish daily outside the education system. It was estimated in 2007 that, outside the cities, about 17,000 people lived in strongly Irish-speaking communities, about 10,000 people lived in areas where there was substantial use of the language, and 17,000 people lived in "weak" Gaeltacht communities. In no part of the Gaeltacht was Irish the only language. Complete or functional monolingualism in Irish is now restricted to a relatively small number of children under school age.
A comprehensive study published in 2007 on behalf of Údarás na Gaeltachta found that young people in the Gaeltacht, despite a largely favourable view of Irish, use the language less than their elders. Even in areas where the language is strongest, only 60% of young people use Irish as the main language of communication with family and neighbours; among themselves they prefer to use English. The study concluded that, on current trends, the survival of Irish as a community language in Gaeltacht areas is unlikely. A follow-up report by the same author published in 2015 concluded that Irish would die as a community language in the Gaeltacht within a decade.
In 2010, the Irish government launched the 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010-2030, designed to strengthen the language in all areas and greatly increase the number of habitual speakers. This was to include the encouragement of Irish-speaking districts in areas where Irish has been replaced by English. The 2015 independent report on the Gaeltacht commissioned by Údarás na Gaeltachta, however, did not regard this strategy as likely to be successful without a radical change in policy at national level, and the 2022 census showed a fall in the number of daily speakers.
Growth of urban Irish Recent research suggests that urban Irish is developing in a direction of its own and that Irish speakers from urban areas can find it difficult to understand Irish speakers from the Gaeltacht. This is related to an urban tendency to simplify the phonetic and grammatical structure of the language. It has been pointed out, however, that Irish speakers outside the Gaeltacht constitute a broad spectrum, with some speaking an Irish which is closely modelled on traditional versions of the language and others speaking an Irish which is emphatically non-traditional.
The written standard remains the same for all Irish speakers, and urban Irish speakers have made notable contributions to an extensive modern literature.
The Irish-American scholar James McClosky has argued that the current (urban) Irish-language revival is in fact highly impressive if seen in perspective. The hopes of earlier revivalists were too high and disappointment was inevitable. But if the current revival is compared to similar efforts elsewhere in the world, it is clear that the Irish example is one of the most successful. He also argues that it is not wise to be prescriptive about the way the language is developing; Irish is an unusual cultural artefact ("") and it is not yet known what will come of the creative influences at work in it.McCloskey, James. Voices Silenced - Guthanna in Éag: Has Irish a Future - An Mairfidh an Ghaeilge Beo. Cois Life, 2001.
Irish and educational attainment It has been argued in one study that tend to be more highly educated than monolingual English speakers, and enjoy the benefits of language-based networking, leading to better employment and higher social status. Though this initial study has been criticised for making certain assumptions, the statistical evidence supports the view that such bilinguals enjoy certain educational advantages, and the 2016 Republic of Ireland census noted that daily Irish language speakers were more highly educated than the population generally in Ireland. Of those daily Irish speakers who had completed their education, 49 per cent had a third level degree or higher at university or college level, compared to a rate of 28 per cent for the state overall.
Usefulness of Irish It has been argued that, although many Irish people see the Irish language as standing for national identity and a collective pride, this is by no means true of all, and that Irish has little utility compared to English. A counterpoint is that one of the chief benefits of studying Irish is that it enables the student to see from disparate linguistic standpoints: "The practice of weighing up arguments, forming opinions and expressing challenging concepts in another language teaches students to think outside the monolingual box". Another argument is that since the primary language of communication is English and that under normal circumstances there is no need to speak Irish, people use Irish in order to make a cultural statement.
The lack of utility has been disputed. It has been pointed out that barristers who speak Irish make up a large proportion of the Bar Council, and that there are at least 194 translators who work through Irish and are licensed by Foras na Gaeilge. The European Union regularly advertises competitions for positions, including those for lawyer-linguists. There is also a demand for teachers, given that there are over 370 primary and secondary Irish-medium and Gaeltacht schools. There is increasing demand for Irish-language teachers abroad, with scholarships available for travel to the United States and Canada. In the area of broadcast media there are many job opportunities for bilingual researchers, producers, journalists, IT and other technical specialists. Opportunities also exist for Irish-speaking actors and writers, especially in television. Many Irish speakers are employed by public relations firms because of a need for clients to be represented in the Irish media and to comply with the requirements of the Official Languages Act.Gradireland: Careers with Irish: https://gradireland.com/sites/gradireland.com/files/public/english-language.pdf
In July 2023 Louise Ryan of Screen Ireland was quoted in The Irish Examiner as saying:
"What we’re seeing now is Irish actors, Irish filmmakers, they’re putting Gaeilge on their CV. They’re training up, they’re brushing up on the Irish. People are really proud to be making content in Irish and they really want to get involved, which I think is really exciting to see." She further revealed that she noticed lot of scripts coming in with elements of the language within those scripts also following the success of An Cailín Ciúin and the Cine4 initiative in general.
Republic of Ireland
The vast majority of Irish in the Republic are, in practice, monolingual English speakers. Habitual users of Irish fall generally into two categories: traditional speakers in rural areas (a group in decline) and urban Irish speakers (a group in expansion).