Language activists in Wales have criticised the nation's new National Assembly over its use of the Welsh language and are pointing to the Dail as an example of how things can go wrong.
Welsh has joint official status with English in the Assembly, but the Welsh Language Society claims Welsh-speaking Assembly members choose to ignore the native language in debates.
Tonight a Welsh-language current affairs programme on S4C, Y Byd Ar Bedwar (The World On Four), will reveal the results of an extensive survey on the use of Welsh in the Assembly chamber.
The programme found only 14 per cent of debates in the main Assembly chamber, since its inception in May, had been conducted in Welsh despite the fact that 20 per cent of the population have Welsh as their first language, and almost a third of Assembly members are classed as fluent Welsh speakers.
Y Byd Ar Bedwar journalists came to Ireland as part of their research for the programme. Here they heard warnings of the pitfalls of not using the native language in political debate. Prof Gearoid O Tuathaigh, a historian from NUI Galway and chairman of Udaras na Gaeltachta, told the programme the Irish experience presented clear lessons for Wales.
He claims the Irish language was left to decline after the State was granted independence in 1922.
"The cautionary part of the Irish story is to avoid its marginalisation into a symbolic minimalist role," he warns.
"The Welsh have to insist upon the full, robust development of Welsh as a working language in the affairs of the state and its people."
Although a detailed survey has not been conducted in Ireland, it is estimated the Irish language is used only about 1 per cent of the time in the Dail's affairs.
The Minister of State for the Gaeltacht, Mr Eamon O Cuiv, one of the main users of the Irish language in the Dail, told Y Byd Ar Bedwar that many Irish-speakers in the Dail are put off from speaking the language because they fear their points will not be picked up by the media.
Mr O Cuiv said: "I could say I was dropping an atomic bomb on Dublin tomorrow, and if I made the point in the Irish language no one from the English-speaking media would take a blind bit of notice."
The Presiding Officer of the Welsh National Assembly, Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas, refutes claims that Wales can learn from the Irish experience.
"The legislative infrastructure is already in place in Wales to ensure the future of Welsh as a live language. That still hasn't happened in Ireland, and the situation is totally different."
Nevertheless, Prof O Tuathaigh warned that the Welsh cannot afford to be complacent about the future of their language.
"It's a crossroads to make up your mind whether the language is to go forward healthily, possessing the new institutions and leaving its mark upon them, or whether it is merely to be a very small symbolic part of a new dispensation," he said.
"That decision is something the Welsh people, and particularly the Welsh speakers, are going to have to negotiate with authority and resolution."
Y Byd Ar Bedwar can be seen on S4C at 9 p.m. tonight. English-language sub-titles are on Teletext, page 888