The official status of the Irish language has remained high in the Republic of Ireland from foundation. This reflects the dominance of the language in Irish cultural and social history until the nineteenth century and its role in Irish cultural identity. In 2022, strong recognition was added in Northern Ireland also. In the 2022 Republic of Ireland census 1,873,997 people or 39.8% of the population in the Republic of Ireland said that they had some ability to speak Irish, out of an overall population of 5,149,139. In Northern Ireland 228,600 people (12.4%) have some ability in the Irish language according to the 2021 census for Northern Ireland, out of a population of 1,903,175 people. It has been found, however, that while ideological support for Irish is high, actual routine use is very low, and that there is very little or rare correlation between personal fluency in the language and the perceived value of Irish as an identity-marker. Nevertheless, the language benefits from the support of activists who continue to use it as a social and cultural medium.
On 13 June 2005, Irish was made an official language of the European Union, the new arrangements coming into effect on 1 January 2007. It is, however, the least routinely spoken of all 24 official languages of the European Union.
Traditional Irish speakers in the areas known as the Gaeltacht have usually been considered as the core speakers of the language. Their number, however, is diminishing, and some assert that they are being replaced in importance by fluent speakers outside the Gaeltacht, including both second-language speakers and a small minority who were raised and educated through Irish. Such speakers are predominantly urban dwellers.
Self-reported number of Irish speakers
In Ireland
In the latest Irish census, of 2022, 1,873,997 people or 39.8% of the population of the Republic of Ireland claimed some ability to speak Irish, which was an increase of 6% compared to the 2016 census. However the number of daily Irish speakers in the state dropped by 2% compared to 2016, with 71,968 people in 2022 claiming to be daily Irish speakers. And there was a decrease from 16,199 people reported as speaking the language every day outside the education system in the Gaeltacht in 2016 to 15,360 in 2022. The 2022 census was the first to include a question on level of ability in the Irish language. Estimates of fully native Irish language speakers in Ireland range from 40,000 to 80,000.
Some 6,000 people (0.3%) in Northern Ireland claim to use Irish as their main home language according to the 2021 UK Census with 71,900 people being able to speak Irish (circa 4% of population) and 228,600 people overall in the state (12.4%) having some knowledge of the language.
Only 7,557 of the Republic of Ireland 2022 census forms were completed in Irish, down from 8,068 in 2016. In anecdotal input, Bank of Ireland has noted that fewer than 1% of their customers use the Irish language option on their banking machines.
Outside Ireland
The number of Irish speakers outside Ireland cannot be readily verified. In 2015 the United States Census Bureau released the 2009-2013 American Community Survey, providing information on "languages spoken at home." The number of Irish speakers in 2010 was given as 20,590 (with a margin of error of 1,291), the states with the largest numbers being New York (3,005), California (2,575), Massachusetts (2,445), Illinois (1,560), New Jersey (1,085) and Florida (1,015). These figures give no evidence of proficiency. There is no information readily available as to the number of Irish speakers in Australia. The same is true of England and Wales. Statistics on languages spoken at home (as gathered in the United States and Australia) give no indication of the number of speakers who use those languages in other contexts.
UNESCO's Atlas of World Languages
In 2021 UNESCO's Atlas of World Languages described the Irish language as "definitely endangered".
In the same report UNESCO estimated that there are between 20,000 and 40,000 Irish speakers in the world. This number of Irish speakers is similarly estimated by Google to be the approximate true number of Irish speakers in the world.