Short answers, pulled from the story.
Annie O'Hanlon died in 1960, marking the end of an unbroken line of daily usage in that region. This event extinguished a dialect that had once been the dominant tongue of the entire island.
Eoin MacNeill and Douglas Hyde established the Gaelic League in 1893. The organization organized weekly gatherings, published the newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis, and successfully campaigned to have Irish included in the school curriculum.
Today the number of fluent Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht has fallen to between 20,000 and 30,000. These areas are the last bastions of the language where Irish continues to be spoken as a community vernacular.
The three major dialect areas are Connacht, Munster, and Ulster. These dialects differ significantly in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, while the dialects of Leinster have largely disappeared.
The year 1953 saw the publication of An Caighdeán, the official standard for the spelling and grammar of written Irish. This standard was designed to simplify and unify the language but has been the subject of controversy and debate ever since.
The Irish language was carried abroad to Great Britain, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. The first large movements began in the 17th century largely as a result of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.