Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by the end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911. Seán Ó hEinirí of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo, who died in 1998, was almost certainly the last monolingual Irish speaker. Twenty-first century In July 2003, the Official Languages Act was signed, declaring Irish an official language, requiring public service providers to make services available in the language, which affected advertising, signage, announcements, public reports, and more. In 2007, Irish became an official working language of the European Union. Independent Ireland and the language The independent Irish state was established in 1922 (Irish Free State 1922–37; Ireland (Éire) from 1937, also described since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland). Although some Republican leaders had been committed language enthusiasts, the new state continued to use English as the language of administration, even in areas where over 80% of the population spoke Irish. There was some initial enthusiasm – a Dáil decree of March 1922 required that the Irish versions of names on all birth, death and marriage certificates would have to be used from July 1923. While the decree was passed unanimously, it was never implemented, probably because of the outbreak of the Irish civil war. Those areas of the state where Irish had remained widespread were officially designated as Gaeltachtaí, where the language would initially be preserved and then ideally be expanded from across the whole island. The government refused to implement the 1926 recommendations of the Gaeltacht Commission, which included restoring Irish as the language of administration in such areas. As the role of the state grew, it therefore exerted tremendous pressure on Irish speakers to use English. This was only partly offset by measures which were supposed to support the Irish language. For instance, the state was by far the largest employer. A qualification in Irish was required to apply for state jobs. However, this did not require a high level of fluency, and few public employees were ever required to use Irish in the course of their work. On the other hand, state employees had to have perfect command of English and had to use it constantly. Because most public employees had a poor command of Irish, it was impossible to deal with them in Irish. If an Irish speaker wanted to apply for a grant, obtain electricity, or complain about being over-taxed, they would typically have had to