There's no getting away from it, Irish and Scottish gaelic share identical roots but have developed into two distinct languages as disimilar as Swedish and Norwegian.
It's not all doom and gloom though.
In the last ten years we have seen the setting up of dozens of Gaelic medium education units for primary school kids.
There,s also an all Gaelic school in Glasgow. We are getting (although painfully slowly) bylingual road signs.
One of the things that surprises me is that there are a few very vocal lowland Scots who opose and mock all things Gaelic. I think we have seen a bit of that in Guest, Big Jock's highly intelectual posting.