In Northern Ireland there are small pockets of people learning it purely out of nationalist sentiment. Sinn Fein have been trying to force an Irish language act

In Northern Ireland there are small pockets of people learning it purely out of nationalist sentiment. Sinn Fein have been trying to force an Irish language act through for years which would see us become more like the south in that regard despite virtually nobody speaking it (the south, at least, has areas in the west of the country where it is actually a first language and therefore justifiable). It's very frustrating because we do foreign languages so badly but instead of making an effort to improve our foreign language skills they're trying to push a largely dead language for purely symbolic reasons.