The official status of the Irish language remains high in the Republic of Ireland. This reflects the dominance of the language in Irish cultural and social history until the nineteenth century and its role in Irish cultural identity. In April 2016 1,761,420 people in the Republic claimed that they could speak Irish, representing 39.8 per cent of respondents out of a population of 4,921,500 (2019 estimate). In Northern Ireland 104,943 claimed to be able to speak Irish out of a population of 1,882,000 (2018 estimate). It has been found, however, that while ideological support for Irish is high, actual routine use is very low, and that there is no correlation between personal fluency in the language and the perceived value of Irish as an identity-marker. Nevertheless, the language benefits fr