Politicians have undermined the Irish language by changing Education policies
Education was the one area where, in its early years, the state made a serious effort to promote the Irish language. By the early 1940s, 55 per cent of primary school children were receiving some or all of their education through Irish. However, among the Irish élite a resurgent anti-Irish ideology was gaining ground. In the late 50s INTO, the teachers' union, came out against the policy of teaching children through Irish where it was not their first language. The claim made at the time was that this was damaging their education. Later research found that bilingual education could be beneficial to children's education, but much depended on parental attitudes. Obviously if parents believed propaganda claims that Irish was damaging their children's education, then they would be hostile to it, so it was to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A dramatic change in policy followed. In 1957/58 there were 232 all-Irish and Irish medium primary schools in the state, outside designated Gaeltacht areas; by 1969/70 this had fallen to 43. Post-primary Irish-medium schools fell from 81 in 1957/58 to 15 in 1980/81 (Shaping The Future p42).
In the Gaeltacht itself, Irish-medium schools were also closed. Again from Shaping The Future:
p12 "State initiatives on education have tended to weaken further the capacity of Gaeltacht schools to function as Irish-medium institutions. In the rationalisation of education from the mid 1960s onwards, small primary schools in the Gaeltacht were closed. Schools were amalgamated - leaving the resultant intake of pupils dominated by English users..."
Not content with virtually destroying Irish-medium education, anti-Irish fanatics calling themselves the Language Freedom Movement launched a new attack in the mid-60s. The following is from "The Celtic Revolution" by Peter Berresford Ellis (Y Lofa, 1985) p123:
"One of the LFM's main propaganda arguments was that, by making Irish a matriculation subject for the Intermediate Certificate of Education, many worthy students failed because of their inability to pass the language sections. The figures produced at the time of this argument demonstrated what a nonsense this contention was. The figures for those failing their Irish examination, compared with those failing another randomly chosen 'compulsory' subject, mathematics, is as follows:
Year Failure in Irish % Failure in Mathematics % 1966 9.8 19.8 1967 8.3 22.6 1968 7.79 19.2 "Overall, only 0.5% of children failed their Certificate of Education in Irish only, and those who did so were shown to have very poor marks in other subjects."
Although the claims of the LFM were obviously rubbish, the requirement to pass in Irish was dropped in 1973. The politicians who forced through this change claimed it would help the teaching of Irish if the compulsory element was removed. The result was a predictable disaster. By 1980 the proportion of Leaving Certificate candidates taking the higher level paper in Irish fell from one half to one quarter. The proportion who failed Irish altogether, or who didn't bother to sit the exam rose from 5.5% to 20.3%. (Shaping The Future p43).
With declining levels of competence in Irish among the English-speaking population, Irish-speakers become ever more marginalised in Irish society. That could only re-enfoced the belief that Irish was useless & encourage Irish-speakers to abandon their language in favour of English.