VIRGIN MEDIA PRESENTER Brian Dowling and broadcaster Ivan Yates have caused an online stir this week over a clip in which they both expressed a mutual dislike of the Irish language.
The short clip, filmed during a broadcast of Virgin’s Six O’Clock Show last week, showed the two shaking hands after Yates said he “couldn’t be arsed” to learn the language.
The former Fine Gael TD also went on to question the level of Government investment in the language because only a handful of people speak it “naturally”. But is he correct?
Ivan Yates claimed on Virgin Media’s Six O’Clock Show that just 16,000 people speak Irish “naturally”.
Asked whether he speaks Irish, Yates said:
“Níl focal ar bith agam [I don't have a word of it]. I couldn’t be arsed to learn Irish. And I’m sorry about it if you’re offended. And all this money we put into it, and there’s only 16,000 people in the country who speak it naturally.”
The Journal contacted Yates for his source for the figure, as well as to seek clarity on what he meant by the term ‘naturally’.
He explained that the 16,000 figure came from Central Statistics Office (CSO) data – collated from the Census – about the number of Irish speakers living in Gaeltacht areas.
“The Census uses a figure of 40,000 to 80,000 people who converse in Irish every day. But they say 16,000 people speak Irish in Gaeltacht areas exclusively, which is what I meant by ‘naturally’,” Yates said.
So what does the CSO say?
There are no official figures for the number of people who speak Irish exclusively, nor are there figures for the number of people who speak Irish as their first language.
But there are breakdowns available for the number of daily Irish speakers – those who use the language most often – throughout the country, as well as the number of Irish speakers living in designated Gaeltacht areas and how often they speak Irish.
We should also clarify that by designated Gaeltacht areas, we mean specific linguistic heritage areas in Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Mayo, Meath, and Waterford that have been identified as the remaining areas in Ireland where the Irish language is spoken.
Irish is of course spoken outside of these areas, but we’ll focus on Gaeltacht areas for now to address Yates’ claim directly.
According to official data collected during the Census, just over 20,000 people living in Gaeltacht areas spoke Irish daily in 2022 (the year the last Census took place).
The specific figure, measured as the number of Irish speakers aged 3 and over living in Gaeltacht areas, was 20,261.
That’s over 4,000 speakers more than the figure given by Yates, though it should be noted that of those daily speakers, 16,879 people were recorded as speaking Irish ‘very well’ – close to Yates’ figure but not the claim that he made (and in addition to the fact that another 2,766 people said they could speak the language ‘well’).
Yates’ figure about Gaeltacht Irish speakers is therefore wrong.
It’s also notable that another 6,435 people living in Gaeltacht areas were recorded as speaking Irish weekly in 2022, with a further 16,844 people recorded as speaking Irish less often than that.
These figures may still seem small but should be put in the context of the total number of people living in Gaeltacht regions in 2022, which was around 106,000, of whom 45,880 said they could speak Irish ‘well’ or ‘very well’.
Yates’ claim also ignores the fact that a huge number of Irish speakers live outside Gaeltacht areas and speak it as ‘naturally’ and as often as those living within those regions.
The last Census found that there were 71,968 daily Irish speakers across the country in 2022 (a figure which included the 20,261 daily Gaeltacht speakers), of whom 64,482 said they speak Irish ‘well’ or ‘very well’.
This is not counting the 553,965 people who speak Irish within the education system (ie as students or teachers), the 115,065 people who only speak Irish on a weekly basis, or the 223,834 people who say they speak Irish ‘well’ or ‘very well’ but who speak it less often than once a week.
In total, 1.9 million people (aged three years or over) said they could speak Irish in 2022, which was an increase of more than 112,500 people compared to Census 2016, though more than one million people also said they do not speak Irish well.
Ivan Yates claimed on The Six O’Clock Show that only 16,000 people in Ireland could speak Irish ‘naturally’.
When asked by The Journal to clarify, Yates said he was referring to the number of daily Irish speakers living in Gaeltacht areas, and directed us to Census figures collated by the Central Statistics Office.
CSO figures show that there were 20,261 daily Irish speakers living in Gaeltacht areas when the last Census was taken in 2022 – a figure 25% higher than the one cited by Yates.
More than 50,000 more people were also recorded daily Irish speakers living outside Gaeltacht areas in 2022 (though this was outside of the scope of Yates’ claim).
We therefore rate the claim: FALSE. As per our verdict guide, this means the claim is inaccurate.
The Journal FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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