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Incredibly, of all the issues that plague the political sphere north of the border, it’s the proposed Irish Language Act that is reportedly keeping Stormont shut down. Whether this is really a critical issue for Sinn Féin and the DUP or merely an exercise in points scoring is unclear but, either way, it is proving to be a major barrier to progress.

A poll carried out during the week on behalf of RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live revealed that 54% of people in the south of Ireland believe that the Irish language should be protected in the North. 23% said it shouldn’t and 23% said they didn’t know.

I wasn’t overly surprised by the percentages but it did make me wonder: how many of those people who feel Irish should be respected elsewhere actually respect Irish themselves?

It seems to me that certain people only care about Irish when someone else tries to mess with it. Like a child with an old toy that they never use, as soon as someone else starts playing with it they want it back.

We’re quick to mock Americans who mispronounce Saoirse Ronan’s name, or British people who say Taoiseach incorrectly. It’s no wonder that we know the right pronunciation of Taoiseach. It’s the only Irish word many of us utter from one year to the next.

In fact, worse than merely abandoning it, many Irish people actually treat our native language with contempt. How many times have you heard someone saying that they hate Irish, before blaming it on “the way it’s taughtä”?

I’ve never bought that excuse personally. I’m not saying the methods used to teach Irish are perfect; they weren’t in my day and I’m sure they certainly weren’t in generations past.

I used to teach English as a foreign language in Asia and my Irish colleagues and I would often reflect that if we were introduced to Irish the way our students were introduced to English – in an entertaining manner and with a focus on practical conversation - we’d all be fluent Gaelgeoirs.

But blaming the schools is a cop out in my opinion. It’s a societal problem. As a nation, our attitude towards languages is terrible - being native English speakers is a crutch that we insist upon using. The simple fact of the matter is that many of us think we can get away with just speaking English, so why bother learning anything else?

Catalan history and politics are not too dissimilar to ours. Franco’s regime banned the use of Catalan, just as the English outlawed Irish. In Catalunya, they can “get by” on Spanish if they want but, instead of shunning their own language, they embrace it.

The majority of countries put Ireland to shame. Many Europeans are at least bilingual, if not trilingual or quadrilingual. Are they smarter than us? Do they have some innate ability to learn multiple languages? Or is our outlook flawed?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on my high horse here. I’m as bad as anyone else when it comes to speaking Irish, and I actually don’t mind languages. My Spanish is okay. I didn’t hate German in school and I picked up some Chinese when I lived in Beijing. The sad thing is, since finishing my leaving Cert I’ve probably used all of those languages more than I’ve used Irish, and I’ve lived in Ireland for the majority of my adult life.

How tragic is that?

So, for those people who think Irish should have special status in the North, it’s worth noting the following: Irish has special status in the south. It’s in our schools, in our courts and on our road signs. If none of us can be bothered to actually speak it, what’s the point?