Language

In terms of Irish language speakers, almost 1.66 million people aged 3 years and over were able to speak Irish in 2006 compared with 1.57 million in 2002. However more revealing was that of the nearly 1.66 million persons who indicated that they could speak Irish, just over 1 million (60%) either never spoke the language or spoke it less frequently than weekly. 485,000 (29.3%) spoke the language on a daily basis within the education system,however, the majority of these,453,000, did not speak the language outside the education system. Just over 72,000 persons, representing 4.4 per cent of all those who could speak Irish, spoke it on a daily basis outside education.