All children in Ireland learn Irish in school for 30-40 minutes per day, typically from age 4-18 years. This is part of Government policy to create a bilingual English and Irish population and to promote greater use of Irish. Despite this, achievement in Irish language learning tends to be very disappointing. Approximately 6.5% of children attend Irish immersion primary schools, however, and these children achieve a high standard of communicative competence (Harris, Forde, Archer, Nic Fhearaile & O’Gorman, 2006). Recent research revealed a continual decline in intergenerational transmission in the small number of Irish-speaking communities that still exist (Ó Giollagáin & Charlton, 2015). While the school system may generate greater numbers of active bilinguals, this is unlikely to compensate for a decline in native speakers unless specific language planning measures are put in place.
This paper presents insights, gathered through questionnaires, of the language practices of current pupils of Irish immersion schools and their parents, some of whom were former pupils of Irish immersion schools. Students (n=373) were asked about their attitudes toward learning and using Irish and the extent to which they availed of opportunities to use Irish in and outside the school context. Parents (n=1,050) were asked about the language spoken in their home growing up, their language of schooling, and their current use of Irish with their children. Both students and parents reveal very positive attitudes towards Irish. These positive attitudes are not matched in practice with active use of Irish. These findings highlight the difficulty of normalising a minority language where the main exposure to the language is confined to school (Thomas, Apolloni & Lewis, 2014). The result is that children may be acquiring high levels of competence in a language that they will not actively use as adults.