I am noticing more and more Irish people speaking the languge socially where I live and more children are being educated primarily through the medium of the languge! I guess when something is becomming rare it becomes more valuable! I was shocked to hear and actually do not believe that at the time the Irish Samuel Johnson - O'Dineen compiler of the most significant Irish dictionary c. 1890 had an extra difficult task in doing so as there were only about 50 people capable of writing Irish ( it's a very non phonetic language and for a language with only 11 irregular verbs a very difficult one to learn although a beautiful one ) at the time, though there would have been many more speakers of it than today!
There is also huge goodwill towards the preservation of the languge, indeed according to census returns there are about a million speakers, which is less truthful in fairness than a bus timetable here! About €400 million is spent on the languge here annually!