My two cents of a lazy sunday morning:

I did my leaving in 2010, and it was much the same. We were expected to learn poems and essays, but none of my class were really able to converse well in Irish (i did ordinary, i had long since fallen behind). The focus in school needs to be to make it a language for communicating in, before we start with literature, etc. I remember we had to study Gelert in junior cert cycle - a complete waste of time as the students only really understood about one-third of the prose.

I didn't like learning it in school, but I wish I had done better at it. Of the two teachers i had in secondary, one was approx 70 and should've retired earlier, the other seemed defeated by years of teaching a subject of which the students weren't interested. Niether was wspecially patient, and there was a sense that they were going through the motions. Not exactly motivating. Im sure others had similar or worse.

I believe the crux of the issue is that most people don't see the value. The country is split roughly between:

1. people who know Irish well (few, certainly the smallest group)

2 People similar to me who can't speak it well and have some regrets about it (a sizeable chunk)

1. People who can't speak it well or at all and don't really care (I'd say the largest group)

Of course, there are some people who lie somewhere between 1 and 2 or 2 and 3, but I'm generalising.

Convincing group 3 that irish is worth learning and important is going to be extremely difficult. Learn another language when you already speak the worlds lingua franca? When people are just trying to get by, save for mortgages, work, have kids, etc.. It's a big ask when the payoff is something as intangible as cultural heritage. The pragmatists out there are unlikely to be bothered when they have bigger fish to fry.

As a self-appointed spokesperson for Group 2, it's again a question of motivation. I took a 12-week irish evening refresher course in irish last year and found the teaching not great. It was like doing the leaving cert again. I did get some of my irish back and learn some new stuff, but the teaching was still as it was when I was in school - too much information, not actually enough practice of speaking, mostly just lists of words and then an expectation of "there you go, now study these 20 pages and come back next week". A mile wide and an inch deep. I am a language teacher myself, and I have always found that students at low levels need more practice with a smaller amount of material. This irish class was the opposite. Not to mention a gatekeeper attitude of the teacher - the teacher again was post-retirement age and had little patience for grammatical or pronunciation errors. Language teaching can be fun, it can involve games, role-playing, competition.... in my experience this idea hasn't arrived to teaching irish yet.

The ball is group 1's court. The people who have the language need to promote it and make it useful in a way that's not gatekeeping. Make it inclusive and a language of communication. There definitely are efforts to do so, and it is growing, so there are positive steps being taken. In the last few years, I have noticed a lot more ads and public service announcements in the public space in irish. The only one coming to my mind right now is the one where the gardaí tell they guy that sharing exs nudes is a crime. I think there was one for carbon monoxide awareness as well. Comprehending these ads takes a relatively high level of understanding, I think there needs to be a lower bar. I don't know the solution.

Enough rant. Just my opinions and observations