Perhaps the question we should also be asking ourselves then is how we get the ‘will’ of the people back to want to learn Irish. Perhaps we have went too far down the one road but I still believe that if encouragement is made then it is possible to get the bi-lingual society that the government aspires to. Once the kids leave school they listen to the radio (in english), they watch tv (in english as only 1 irish channel), play computer games in english, read comics (in english). Even small household items and instructions are in english. If they go home and the parents are speaking english then naturally they will speak it too. Quite simply anything they want to do outside the school is in english. Until that disappears then ‘school irish’ may be the best they can hope for.
The gaeltacht areas especially require a more proactive / hardening of approach with reducing the influx of english. keeping the people there with jobs would be a start as if the natural speakers leave due to lack of employment opportunites then you have naturally less speakers in the area which exacerbates the problem further. The obvious route is to employ a lot of people in interpretation services.
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