In the first report to be published from last year’s Census, it has been revealed that Irish is the third most spoken language in Ireland.

Census figures show that more people speak Polish (119,526) at home than speak Irish (almost 82,600). French is spoken by 56,430 people. The number of people who answered “yes” to the question “Can you speak Irish?” increased from 2006, to 1.77 million in April 2011. More women identify themselves as Irish speakers than men.

Interestingly, Irish doesn’t seem to be catching on with young people, with one in three 10 -19 year olds answering “no” to the question “Can you speak Irish?” Just over 12% of the population speak Irish on a daily basis in the education system only though. It seems as if Irish is seen as a language for school use only – what can be done to combat this?

(Sources: RTE and Central Statistics Office report)