The point about figures is true -humans are poor when it comes to visualising large amounts, perhaps because we can appreciate small numbers of discreet things and feel the size of large things (like the ocean, or the size of a mountain) but we don't do complexity, simultaneous-ness and scale all at the same time.

As for spending on Irish over hospital beds -it's a false dichotomy. The lack of beds is a policy decision, not a resource one. The creation of the HSE and HIQA and the attendant increase in bureaucrats of all levels from doctors with three secretaries to the large number of directors, each with six-figure salaries, coupled with the privatisation of the health sectors, and all that implies (bed curtains for 7 euro each as opposed to 70 cent, elderly care jumping from 150 euro a week in local, government-run institutions to 1000+ euro a week in nursing homes) means that the health system is for Ireland what the military is for the US -a progressively expensive and corrupting influence where the primary function is to exist rather than to carry out its ostensible responsibilities.

None of the above scratches public consciousness as it would require a slightly more sophisticated mental approach to things, which is not something large groups of people are famous for and when you factor in false narratives in history and economics, incorrect and incoherent ideas become the norm even at the level of the individual. Imagine if the government turned the whole country into one giant hospital, would all problems in the health service be fixed? Not likely. If ever penny was spent on Irish, would native speakers pop up like trees? No

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I'm only talking about Irish. Differentiating them from speakers of other similarly-sized languages, the current generation of native Irish speakers:

• are surrounded by English speakers
• have the right to travel/relocate
• have enough money to travel/relocate
• have access to internet, TV, etc.
• are governed by mostly English-speaking politicians
• have spent over 150 years being a small population
• have the right to enjoy Ireland's literature, theater, film and comedy, which for 150 years has been mostly in English

Any plan based on isolating Irish speakers from English is doomed because it treats Irish speakers as having an obligation to accept a certain amount of isolation (and Ireland's English-speakers have no such obligation, so that would make Irish-speakers a sub-class with fewer rights).

(Also, any plan involving monoglots is very dubious. The number of monoglots in the age group 15-20 in the whole of the EU today is small and shrinking.)

Now, if there was a million speakers, then many Irish-speakers might choose to live mostly through Irish. And the people leaving that way of life would be partly cancelled out by others joining it (spouses, children of "mixed" marriages whose parents choose Irish, people drawn to Irish-language culture).

The last point on my list is something I haven't raised so far, but it's crucial. Ireland has a tonne of great standup comedians, as well as literary giants and traditional song writers. We can't ask the Gaeltacht population to play an essential role and be proud of preserving one part of Ireland's culture, while also asking them to stay away from the English works of (i.e. 98% of the works of) Dara O'Briain, Samuel Beckett, Liam O'Flaherty, The Rubber Bandits, and the Dubliners! So all realistic solutions have to assume that most native Irish speakers will have a high level of English, and they'll use it sometimes.

An Irish-English one and an Irish-Irish one, which they hope to have ready for 2023:

http://tuairisc.ie/plean-ag-foras-na-ga ... iun-focal/

I'm not well-informed on this, but since an English-Irish dictionary was published online in 2013 ( http://www.focloir.ie/ ), maybe these two are its counterparts. I think I also read that a print edition of the English-Irish dictionary is being worked on with a target of 2016.

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Pages I made:
(These are unfortunately offline for the near future, but they'll be back!)

• Teaching Young Kids Irish (It's just my notes, a work in progress.)
• CD transcript and translations for the book Learning Irish

Personally, I'd why the government is really part of the discussion. Irish has no political leverage, has been the politically weaker language for over 400 years, the numerically weaker for 250, and today has no power in a country run for the benefit of an alliance of political and business actors based in Dublin, the centre of Anglicisation for 800 years.

Had there been no Famine, Connacht, Donegal and West Munster would have been producing native speaking political candidates from the later 19th century onwards representing constituency interests and had language and culture been a part of the package, things would be different. But that didn't happen.

I would even go as far to say that the Establishment would interfere with any genuine attempts at a wider grassroots development of the language, at least until it were strong enough to push back, but as things stand, it's all very fractured (natives, learners, purists, linguists, Gaelscoileanna) with different forms of Irish, goals and preferences, and no real form to it all, IMO

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My main goal is to be able to teach my kids Irish, but reading Irish-language literature is a bonus I'm really looking forward to.

I've learned a few languages and my usual technique for getting started with novels is to start with translations of books I've already read. This is difficult with Irish since not a single book I've ever read has been translated into Irish, so first I've to pick some books that are translated and read their English originals. Here's my list so far:

• Angela's Ashes - Luaithreach Angela (Frank McCourt)
• Cás aduain an Dr Jekyll agus Mhr Hyde
• The Hound of the Baskervilles - Cú na mBaskerville
• The Hobbit - An Hobad (JRR Tokien) - maybe, but I'm not a fan
• The Little Prince - An Prionsa Beag - what a bore, but if I find it 2nd hand...

And these easy books from the Open Door series:

• The Builders - Na Tógálaithe (Maeve Binchy)
• Mad Weekend - Deireadh Seachtaine Craiceáilte (Roddy Doyle)
• An accident waiting to happen - Timpiste réidh le tarlú (Vincent Banville)
• Secrets - Rúin (Patricia Scanlan)
• The Smoking Room - An seomra tobac (Julie Parsons)
• No Dress Rehearsal - Is gearr... (Marian Keyes)
• Jesus and Billy are off to Barcelona - Tá Jesus agus Billy ag imeacht go Barcelona (Deirdre Purcell)

Then there's a small number of books written in Irish which have been translated into English. My usual preference would be to leave these until I can read them directly in Irish, but since there are so few books that exist in the two languages, I think I'll have to read these in my English-first phase.

• An Béal Bocht
• Peig
• Scothscéalta - 15 Short Stories translated from the Irish (Pádraic Ó Conaire)
• An Braon Broghach - The Road to Bright City (Máirtín Ó Cadhain)
• Lig Sinn i gCathú - Lead Us Into Temptation (Breandán Ó hEithir)
• ...and I saw a few parallel text bilingual books such as Eochair Mac Rí in Éirinn

(List expanded with suggestions from Dylan.)

Well, that's fewer books than I thought I'd find. But that's life.

In the mean time, an author you might like is Liam O'Flaherty. He's a native Irish-speaker but wrote in English (with one exception: Dúil). I think he brilliantly captures Irish life from the early 20th century.

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Pages I made:
(These are unfortunately offline for the near future, but they'll be back!)

• Teaching Young Kids Irish (It's just my notes, a work in progress.)
• CD transcript and translations for the book Learning Irish

Thanks! I'll add those to my list. Liam O'Flaherty looks like he'll have some really good stuff. Lousy thing about being in America, there's no chance of finding any Irish language books in the library so it's either buy them or forget about them.

I don't know if you saw it already but at the end of Learning Irish, Ó Siadhail lists Scothscéalta by Pádraic Ó Conaire, An Braon Broghach by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and Lig Sinn i gCathú by Breandán Ó hEithir. All 3 of these have been translated into English from the Irish originals.

Also, The Hound of the Baskervilles was translated into Irish back in the day by a native speaker as Cú na mBaskerville. I picked that up too.

I added those books now. Someone might stumble on this page from a search engine and find it useful.

Liam O'Flaherty is the kind of stuff I'm hoping to find more of by being able to read in Irish. The Black Soul and Famine are two of his books set in rural Ireland.

I'm lucky that I'll be spending Christmas in Dublin, but until then I've no Irish books. (Not that I've the level to read them yet.) A poor man's solution would be to read samples from Cló Iar-Chonnacht:

https://www.google.be/search?q="cic.ie/images/uploads/docs/"

Probably not very useful but the first two short stories from Scothscéalta are there, for example.

_________________
Pages I made:
(These are unfortunately offline for the near future, but they'll be back!)

• Teaching Young Kids Irish (It's just my notes, a work in progress.)
• CD transcript and translations for the book Learning Irish

If you don't mind reading on the computer (or have an ereader) you can use Scribd. Decent amount of stuff there. All CIC and LeabharBreac ebooks.