Irish is one of the oldest and most historical written languages in the world. The earliest evidence of this is on Ogham stones from the 5th century.
Now Irish can now be found in more than 4,500 books, on the television, on the radio, in the newspapers, magazines, and on the internet. We cannot be certain when Irish first came to Ireland, but many scholars believe that it was here over 2,500 years ago. There were other languages spoken here before Irish but, by 500AD, Irish was spoken all over Ireland and was spreading through Scotland, the west coast of Britain and the Isle of Man.

In the year 1893 Dubhghlas de hÍde, Eoin Mac Néill, Father Eoghan Ó Gramhnaigh and others established Conradh na Gaeilge, or the Gaelic League. Within a couple of years they managed to create a mass movement of support for the Irish language. A start was made to bringing the grammar of the written language into line with the spoken modern language. A result of these efforts was the Official Standard which the Government of Ireland published in 1958.

According to the Census of 2016, 1.76 million people in the Republic of Ireland can speak Irish. The Irish language is the language of the community in Gaeltacht regions and the language is also gaining strength in places outside the Gaeltacht.

The Gaeltacht areas are in the seven counties of Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Meath, Mayo, and Waterford. A total of 63,664 persons (aged 3 or over) or 66.3 per cent of persons in the Gaeltacht areas said that they could speak Irish in 2016.

According to the results of the 2011 Census, 11% (184,898) of the population have a knowledge of Irish, 1% higher than the 2001 Census. 11% can understand the language, 6 % can speak Irish and 5% can read and write Irish.

In the South of Ireland, there are currently hundreds of Irish medium schools between nursery, primary and secondary level. According to Gaeloideachas, there are 160 Irish nurseries catering for 4,980 children, outside of the Gaeltacht, there are 286 primary schools catering for 49,822 pupils and 78 post-primary schools catering for 15,784 students.

In the North, currently there are a total of 92 schools providing Irish-medium Education to over 6,000 children at pre-school, primary and post primary level.

Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland states the following:

The 2003 Official Languages Act confirmed this in legislation in the South. The Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga (The Language Commissioner) was established under the Official Languages Act as an independent statutory office operating as an ombudsman's service and as a compliance agency.

In the North, the Irish language was promised ‘parity of esteem’ under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and although was recognised further under the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, as ratified by the UK Government for Irish in 2001, the language was largely marginalised in public and legal terms. In January 2020, following a long community-led campaign (known as An Dream Dearg), the ‘New Decade, New Approach’ Agreement secured further legal status for the language in the North, and the establishment of a new Irish language Commissioner for the region.

Efforts continue to strengthen this legislation and bring it into line with the Welsh and Irish (South) legal official language status.