Reading further - or backwards - today, in a 1908 diary, Dr Henebry seems to have been centred in Waterford; he's at a meeting of the Gaelic League there where classes in Irish were held five nights a week, plus dancing and history classes! - and he's described as clocking and clocking for an hour or so about how one can't learn Irish from books but "ought to go to old native speakers up in Barrack St and similar beastly places".
(The writer then finds a native speaker, and notes sadly: "It is bad enough when you can't understand a native-speaker's Irish, but it is worse when they can't understand yours."