"I have been struck, by how literate many ordinary working class irish people are compared to their corresponding English counter parts"
In pockets of rural Ireland the native spoken language was Irish, which was forbidden or discouraged in many areas
Within the lives of several people we knew we were told of a practice of 'the stick', where a child in an Irish speaking area had a short stick hung around their neck, which was notched with a penknife by the teacher each time the pupil was heard speaking Irish - at the end of the week it would receive that many strokes of the cane.

During the Famine, education became a religious weapon in some areas; 'Souper" schools were set up by some chuchmen
The Children would receive a bowl of watery soup if they could persuade their parents to attend non-Catholic schools
There's such a school within sight of our house - it's now (rather symbolically) a business for changing worn tyres.

After independence there was a concentration of education, which is now considered pretty important - most kids learn are educated bi-lingually though there is a running debate on whether Irish is important enough a subject to continue teaching it.
We were discussing the hedge-schools yesterday in the song-workshop, and their influence in Irish song-making
Jim Carroll