Hands up anyone who doesn’t know how to ask for permission to go to the toilet in Irish. No hands. Thought so. For let it not be said that anyone emerges from the Irish education system without being able to apply for authorisation to relieve themselves.

Of course once you reach adulthood, you can skip to the loo whenever you like without so much as a by-your-leave, so it’s not one of those cúpla focal phrases you can use in later life or you’ll risk being thought peculiar. But sadly ‘an bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas’ is as much as many of us can remember, despite 12 years of being force-fed the Irish language to the point of hating it.

Nevertheless, the concerted State effort to keep Irish in its barely alive condition is to continue, and school-going children and teenagers are to continue to be tortured to that end. And there’s to be no wriggling out of it. Tut-tut, anyone who tries to wriggle out of it.

This week, a new report commissioned by Conradh na Gaeilge laments the growth of Irish exemptions in secondary school. And in much the same way as a visit to Specsavers is never going to end with you being told you don’t need glasses, a report from Conradh na Gaeilge is never going to suggest we can loosen up a bit on the revival front, leave the kids alone, let Spongebob ar TG4 pick up the slack, what will be will be. No way. The ghost of Douglas Hyde is breathing his icy breath down our necks. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam and all that.

The report’s author, Pádraig Ó Duibhir, reveals that some 60,000 students were exempt from Irish at second level in 2024, of whom 62% had learning difficulties and 38% had had their early education abroad. Professor Ó Duibhir complains that half of those exempt because of a learning difficulty are studying a foreign language, the implication being that there’s not a thing wrong with them actually and they’re just gaming the system. He doesn’t say exactly that, but it’s very much hinted at.

He warns that ‘if urgent action is not taken, the status of Irish as a compulsory school subject will be further reduced’ – and considering the hordes of students who fervently wish for that to happen, it’s hard to know who he’s trying to alarm with this.

He points out that the Department of Education insists it’s not Government policy to make Irish an optional subject, but ‘that is what will result’ if no action is taken. He calls it a ‘disastrous situation’, although you’d think he’d be more careful not to bring about a nationwide panic.

Similarly, Conradh secretary-general Julian de Spáinn urged Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton to ‘act on the recommendations’ in the report immediately ‘in order to address the crisis of exemptions from the study of Irish’.

Such language… ‘crisis’, ‘disaster’… Was it for this the men of 1916 died, I ask you. And sure enough, the 800 years do put in their expected appearance in this report, with the reminder that in the 19th Century Irish was banned in schools and it was English that was compulsory. If we were determined to be still annoyed about that, I suppose, we might be more inclined to memorise our Irish declensions.

And on this point, Prof. Ó Duibhir laments that children with an Irish exemption are being ‘denied a deeper insight into their heritage’ and ‘denied part of their identity’. He must be referring to that strange, uniquely Irish kind of identity, the invisible kind, in which a language you never use defines who you are. Imagine a birthmark you’ve had removed so it can no longer be used to identify you. It’s like that.

Presumably the corollary of this is that fluent Irish speakers are a fair bit more Irish than people who can get by in the language but forget how to use an modh foshuiteach, and a vast deal more Irish than those who only know how to ask to go to the toilet. Meanwhile, anyone who’s made Ireland their home and never learnt the language at all is not even in contention.

The spectrum of Irishness must be very short, by these lights. To achieve the full Irish, I suppose ideally you should be a fluent Gaeilgeoir with a wide beard – none of these imported narrow beards – and you should be fanatical about the GAA and enjoy the sound of six to eight instruments all playing the same notes, at least half of them out of tune, and keep a smidgin of Brits Out sentiment in your very core that no amount of Anglo-Irish intergovernmental co-operation can dislodge. Anything less than that and you’re into varying degrees of statelessness, lacking a national identity to a greater or lesser extent.

And so this is our plan, to keep on trying to rescue a brilliant but moribund language by, first pretending it’s something it’s not – a vital part of our daily lives and national identity – and second, making children despise it. And that plan is working so well, isn’t it?

This week should make us mourn again the loss of Manchán Magan, who did more in his shortened life to promote the Irish language than a century of learning under duress has achieved. 

Manchán’s effortless good did so much to counter the antipathy generated by too many years of censoriousness and carping. If we had ten more like him, we might save the language, instead of continuing to parade its ailing body around like this in front of generations of hostile schoolchildren.

 The keys to success? Get a big enough mansion...

Jordan Hewson, Bono’s daughter, has revealed her family were shocked when she told them she wanted to be a musician, having previously been a tech boss. Speaking to Flood magazine about the family’s reaction, Jordan said: ‘All shocked. Music was always a very private thing for me. Even piano – I would get up in the morning before anyone was awake to play. It was really important to me that I could do it without people listening.’

Yes, agreed, it would be lovely to be able to get your practice in with no one to hear. But how big a mansion would you need, to be able to play in the morning without waking everyone up? I suppose the Hewsons can answer that.

A red card from the USA may prove a blessing

In my youth, before the fall of the Soviet Union, I took an Aeroflot flight with an overnight layover in Moscow. 

We were all put up in a hotel that was kept locked, making us wonder if the regime seriously believed anyone would try to escape into the USSR. Somali soccer referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who by now is back in Mogadishu having been denied entry to the US for the World Cup, must be wondering the same thing. 

Does America really think anyone else in the world would really want to live there now?