The number of people able to speak Irish has shown a slight decline since 2002, according to census figures published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today.
Almost 1.66 million people aged three and over were able to speak Irish in 2006, compared with 1.57 million in 2002.
In percentage terms, that translates as a slight decline from 42.8 per cent of the population in 2002 to 41.9 per cent in 2006 when the census was conducted.
The figures show that out of the 1.66 million people able to speak the language only a tiny proportion used it in their everyday lives.
Just over one million (60 per cent) either never spoke the language or spoke it less frequently than weekly. Some 485,000 (29.3 per cent) spoke the language on a daily basis within the education system, but the majority of these (453,000) did not speak the language outside the education system.
Just over 72,000 people - or 4.4 per cent of all those who could speak Irish - spoke it on a daily basis outside education, while one in four of these also spoke it daily within the education system.
The ability to speak Irish was higher among females (45.3 per cent) than males (38.4 per cent). Ability to speak Irish was highest among the school-going population with over two-thirds of 10-14-year-olds recorded as being able to speak the language.
Of towns with a population of 1,500 or more in 2006, Dingle/An Daingean in west Kerry had the highest proportion of Irish speakers (62.3 per cent). There were proportionately fewer Irish speakers in urban areas (39.4 per cent) compared with rural ones (45.6 per cent).
Irish speakers accounted for 70.8 per cent of the population aged three and over in Gaeltacht areas in 2006 - down from 72.6 per cent in 2002. The occupational groups with the highest ability to speak Irish were teachers (77.9 per cent), gardaí (74.1 per cent) and religious (58.8 per cent).
