Thanks for the responses all. As someone who has had (and is still having) a difficult time learning the language whilst living in a place where it isn't indigenous and resources aren't readily available, it's sad to me that there remains no official recognition for it in a decent chunk of its native land. It's also sad how it's become a symbol of the underlying tensions between SF and the DUP (from what people are saying, it appears to be the DUP, rather than the average unionist voter, who have an issue with it, correct me if that's a misreading.)
I was interested to read recently that a CoE church in Coventry had blocked the family of an Irish parishioner from putting an innocuous Irish-language phrase on her gravestone unless it was accompanied by an English translation, partially for fear of people seeing it as a 'political statement'. Assuming they haven't gone round adding translations to all the Latin in the churchyard, it seems that the idea of the Irish language as being inherent seditious seems to have hungover from the colonial era.