Short answers, pulled from the story.
In 2022, daily Irish speakers outside the education system in the Republic of Ireland numbered 71,968, split between 20,261 in the Gaeltacht and 51,707 outside it. In the 2021 census of Northern Ireland, 43,557 individuals stated they spoke Irish daily.
Irish became an official EU language on the 1st of January 2007, though a derogation meant only certain documents were available in Irish until the derogation ended on the 1st of January 2022, at which point Irish became fully recognised across all EU legislative functions.
The Gaelic League, Conradh na Gaeilge, was established in 1893 by Eoin MacNeill and other enthusiasts of Irish language and culture, with Douglas Hyde as its first president. Its purpose was to counter the Anglicisation of Ireland by encouraging the use of Irish in everyday life, and within ten years of its founding it had grown to 400 branches.
Irish has three main living dialects: Connacht, Munster, and Ulster Irish. Each differs in stress patterns, vocabulary, verb forms, and the use of certain grammatical particles. The Leinster dialect has no surviving traditional community of speakers; the last known native Leinster speaker, Annie O'Hanlon, died in 1960.
An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, meaning the Official Standard, is the standardised written form of Irish developed by the Irish government. It was published by the translation department of Dáil Éireann in 1953 and later updated in 2012 and 2017. It simplified and unified spelling across dialects but has been criticised for favouring South Connacht forms over those of Munster and Ulster.
Written Irish dates back to at least the 4th century AD, when Ogham inscriptions recorded Primitive Irish. Latin script replaced Ogham from the 5th century AD onward, and Old Irish from the 6th century is attested in marginalia to Latin manuscripts, making Irish one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Western Europe.