Irish-speaking Population
There were in Ireland at the time of the Census of 1861, 1,105,536 persons who spoke Irish. 163,275 of them spoke Irish only; the other 942,261 spoke both Irish and English. Of those who spoke Irish only, 3,075 were in the civic districts and 160,200 in the rural districts. That the number is declining is obvious from the circumstance that the proportion under 20 years of age was less than a third. 77,818 were in Connaught (in a population of less than a million), 62,039 in Munster, 23,180 in Ulster, only 238 in all Leinster.