Scots Wikipaedia

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Kevin myers is hardly a neutral observer. He is a highly partisan commentator with a major political axe to grind who is not above at the very least misquoting if not downright fabricating statistics to support his cause (He hates the Irish language amongst many other things).
I have direct personal experience of both the UK and Irish education systems and the Irish secondary-level one (in it's present form, I only left tertiary level education 6 years ago) is superior.

For get about Kevin Meyers-- that's not the subject at hand, no matter how much you may wish to disparage him. Take off the rose coloured glasses and look at the hard facts: Only about 12% of the Irish population can be considered as "literate" in the Irish language despite having spent at least an hour a day, for twelve years, "learining" the language in school. Sure he may have a few words of social Irish, but the average 30-something couldn't fill out a DSS form, or pass the written portion of the Road Test in Irish, if called on to do so. Worse, almost a quarter of those leaving school today can't fill out those forms in English without assistance. If, as you say, the secondary education system where you live isn't as good as the Irish system, all I can say is God help you. Your schools must be turning out a generation of dolts.

But here's the whole point of it.

Like it or not, for political, cultural, or economic reasons we are English speakers, and it does no one any good to have schools turning out students who are unable to function in the real, work-a-day world, in English, especially when that bit of their education is given short shrift because of some lofty-- although possibly misguided-- "nationalist" ideal. Whether we are talking about Scots, Lallans, or Irish, the bottom line is this: it doesn't matter how good--or bad-- they are in that language. If they can't read, write, and comprehend English, they are going to be doomed, if not condemned, to the lowest end of the social scale.

[thanmuwa]

For get about Kevin Meyers-- that's not the subject at hand, no matter how much you may wish to disparage him.

I am disparaging his made-up statistics. And if you want to forget about him, why are you using his figures yet again?

Take off the rose coloured glasses and look at the hard facts: Only about 12% of the Irish population can be considered as "literate" in the Irish language despite having spent at least an hour a day, for twelve years, "learining" the language in school. Sure he may have a few words of social Irish, but the average 30-something couldn't fill out a DSS form, or pass the written portion of the Road Test in Irish, if called on to do so.

See above, where I also talked about how poorly the Irish language is taught. By the way, first hand experience is usually referred to as "evidence", "rose tinted spectacles" would more accurately refer to using the wild ramblings of an opinion columnist piece as fact. Hint: if a newspaper article is called an opinion piece it means there is even less of a constraint on it to be truthful than in the rest of the paper....

Worse, almost a quarter of those leaving school today can't fill out those forms in English without assistance.

See above, that figure of 25% is plucked from the air and "functionally illiterate" is a phrase so ill-defined as to be essentially meaningless anyway.

If, as you say, the secondary education system where you live isn't as good as the Irish system, all I can say is God help you. Your schools must be turning out a generation of dolts.

"My schools" (I presume you mean schools in the UK) do appear to be pretty poor. 10 year old kids appear to be struggling with books I read when I was 6. On this side of the Atlantic, the perception is that things are even worse over there, that US schoolkids are too busy smuggling guns and drugs into school to worry about education, but I have no idea how true that is.... Comparisons to other European education systems certainly seems to come out poorly for the UK.

But here's the whole point of it.

Like it or not, for political, cultural, or economic reasons we are English speakers, and it does no one any good to have schools turning out students who are unable to function in the real, work-a-day world, in English, especially when that bit of their education is given short shrift because of some lofty-- although possibly misguided-- "nationalist" ideal. Whether we are talking about Scots, Lallans, or Irish, the bottom line is this: it doesn't matter how good--or bad-- they are in that language. If they can't read, write, and comprehend English, they are going to be doomed, if not condemned, to the lowest end of the social scale.

Again, you are implying that being an Irish speaker means that you are therefore poor at English. That, quite simply, is untrue. They are not mutually exclusive. Unlike Homer Simpson, for most people learning another language doesn't make the first one fall out...
Again giving a personal example, I had all those lessons in Irish. The Irish was taught poorly (on this mr myers, you and I are in agreement), so my Irish is not as good as I would like, to my regret. However, my English has most certainly not suffered for it and I have a much higher standard of English than the majority of my UK colleagues, (who in the majority of cases only speak one language). My sample regions (areas in which I have worked/studied) are Belfast, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Hull, York, Southampton and London, so reasonable comprehensive.
My point remains that proficiency in another language doesn't hinder and may well help your English. For example, most medical terms have either a Greek or Latin root.