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.
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