The major difficulty with the Irish language in Ireland is the way it is taught in schools - the curriculum is old and dreadful. Our state examination system is also a problem in that it relies heavily on rote learning and obviously that doesn't lend itself well to using a language as a living thing. I think it should be mandatory at school, but in a more natural way. Why would any country throw away thousands of years of oral history? Our literary and spoken history is recorded in Irish. The way Irish people speak English reflects the grammatical structure of Irish. We are not American, or British, or Canadian so why would we homogenise ourselves?

Paul is right when he says that the majority of Irish people do want our language to be used. It is important as a cultural artefact, is greatly tied up in our (very recent in historical terms) independence as a nation, and no, we are not going to start calling the Taoiseach the Prime Minister, ever.

Admittedly I am somewhat biased as a lover of the language and someone who speaks it, but the number of 7,000 or so is far too low. I don't know what publication it was in, or indeed where the higher number came from, but it's not that low.