Obviously a child can't make an informed decision about learning his first language (or languages - our daughter speaks English and Russian). However, after that point language learning should be a completely voluntary process. Forcing someone to learn a language that is completely useless is an incredible waste of time, effort and money, and there is no tangible benefit to doing so. Sure, throw a few fun Irish words into the landscape and people will remember them. They'll say "Slainte" (with the accent mark) and learn how to say "I think I've thrown up on your dog" or something like that and the language can die naturally. Anything else is just like what they're doing to Ariel Sharon right now.