How many people speak Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) as a first or primary language?
Estimates of fully native speakers range from 20,000 to 50,000 people. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs estimated in 2007 that 17,000 people lived in areas where Irish was the community language, and a further 10,000 in areas where it is partly the community language. But since Irish is an obligatory subject in schools, many more are reasonably fluent second-language speakers. Furthermore, a much larger number regularly regard themselves as competent to some degree in the language: 1,656,790 (41.9% of the total population aged three years and over) regard themselves as competent Irish speakers. Of these, 538,283 (32.5%) speak Irish on a daily basis, 97,089 (5.9%) weekly, 581,574 (35.1%) less often, 412,846 (24.9%) never, and 26,998 (1.6%) didn’t state how often. Today, complete monolingualism is almost unheard of, and probably restricted to the very elderly in Gaeltacht regions and to native speakers under school age.
