From the link supplied by Jim in his last post:

Tierney believed that the very purpose of a free Irish state would be to forge an Ireland through education that linked the Gaelic state of the past to what he envisaged as the Christian state of the future.

Unfortunately for Tierney's beliefs there never was any such thing as a Gaelic State of the past

"Raised on songs and stories. Heroes of renown" – just about sums it up. And if you have been daft enough to swallow it, then learning the actual history of the place must come as one hell of a shock.

In his academic work, MacNeill identified the basis of the Irish nation in the remote Gaelic past. He showed that the Irish nation was an ancient historical entity whose formation could be traced back to the fifth century: 'the Irish people stand singular and eminent … from the fifth century forward, as the possessors of an intense national consciousness'

Any historian whose speciality is medieval history {The study of history from the 5th to the 15th centuries} could destroy MacNeill's notions in an instant and expose them as pure fairy tales.

In 1924, the orthodox Catholic Bulletin declared that 'The Irish nation is the Gaelic nation; its language and literature is the Gaelic language; its history is the history of the Gael. All other elements have no place

In terms of teaching anybody anything that is a ludicrously myopic, isolationist and retrograde point of view on which to build a system of education. The results of which have hardly been a success – if this system has been in place for 90 years how come only somewhere between 5% and 10% of Ireland's population use it?

"In the 2011 census for the Republic, 94,000 people reported using Irish as a daily language outside of the education system, and 1.3 million reported using it at least occasionally in or out of school. There are several thousand Irish speakers in Northern Ireland. It has been estimated that the active Irish-language scene probably comprises 5 to 10 per cent of Ireland's population.{Source: Romaine, Suzanne (2008), "Irish in a Global Context", in Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín and Seán Ó Cearnaigh, A New View of the Irish Language, Dublin: Cois Life Teoranta, ISBN 978-1-901176-82-7 – Just in case Jim thought I'd made it up}

In Gaeltacht areas, however, there has been a general decline of the use of Irish. It has been predicted that, within 10 years, Irish will no longer be the primary language in any of the designated Gaeltacht areas {Source: "Ranafast Gaeltacht in Donegal fights Irish language decline – BBC News". Bbc.co.uk. 2015-08-13. Retrieved 2015-10-31.}

Wonder if non-Irish folks following this thread are aware of it but if you want any civil service or government job in the Republic you must be able to speak Gaelic. I once knocked round Lahinch golf course with an American who had employed one of the caddies, a youngster about 14 years old. Through the summer he'd been making money at the club hand over fist but he told us that all that was about to come to an end because he had to go off to summer school for intensive Gaelic instruction as that would open up more employment options for him when it came time to leave school. He thought it a complete and utter waste of time and absolutely hated the idea of doing it.
   
Milne argued that the majority of Protestants in the Irish Free State had considered themselves Irish in imperial terms. In contrast with southern Catholic nationalists, southern Protestant unionists felt deeply the pressure of political change. Many schools under Protestant management did not subscribe to the Gaelicicising policies and the historical perspective of the new state. They had to bear the rigours of a state Gaelicisation policy, or else see their schools deprived of all public funding.

The will and choice of the people Jim, or simple big state bully-boy coercion?