Brexit : May can still avoid Brexit train wreck - but she will have to take a new line

[OnDoutside]

22. One thing we will have to face up to is that 45 years into the EU, we still have so much of

our trade with the UK, largely because it was easier to trade with a country that also spoke English. My son is currently in Primary School (age 5-13), and they are taught Mathematics, English and Irish as the main subjects (but they would also cover basic history, geography, science etc). When they are 8 and 13, they would do a lot of in class work for their Catholic Holy Communion and Confirmation. Nowhere in there do they teach them another European language, at a such a crucial age when kids are like sponges. Up to the age of 9 is the optimal time period to pick up a new language, most kids don't start learning French/German etc until they reach secondary school.

Instead learning Irish is compulsory until they're 18/19 years of age. Successive governments have pumped hundreds of millions into this over many decades and less people are speaking/able to speak Irish, yet kids spend 14 years studying a language that most will never use. We need to have that conversation.

Of the 1.76 million people who stated they were able to speak Irish, 73,803 spoke the language daily outside of the education system, which is 3,382 fewer than 2011. Some 32 per cent of Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas spoke Irish daily outside the education system.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/census-2016-says-we-are-older-less-religious-and-speak-less-irish-1.3038927