Yep you do need higher irish :)
bunscoil
No. For primary and secondary school teaching, Irish is a mandatory subject. Primary school teachers are expected to have Irish. Exceptions can be made for teachers who are not Irish and so would not have learnt Irish in school themselves. So it is possible for teachers from other countries to work in Ireland as a primary school teacher without Irish. If the teachers are Irish themselves, then they are expected to have Irish in order to teach in a primary school. For secondary schools, different teachers would have specialist subjects, so not every teacher would be teaching Irish. So they would not need to have Irish. For other levels of education, it is not an issue at all.
Summer break in an Irish primary school is usually 9 weeks.
Irish
In Irish it's "Fáilte go Bunrang a ceathair"
It has not been made public what primary school Eoin Colfer attended, but it was in southeast Ireland. He also taught at an Irish primary school in Wexford.
Beginning in 1607, the primary immigrants were British. The years of 1820 to 1830 saw a wave of Irish immigrants.
A Irish Martingale
The primary, and most commonly used language in Ireland is English, but the Irish language is taught in schools, from primary level (elementary level) right up until graduation from secondary (high) school and is generally mandatory. Both English and Irish are the official languages of Ireland. All official EU (European Union) papers and documents are translated into Irish, in addition to all other languages of the EU. There are areas in Ireland called Gaeltachts (the word Gaeltacht means Irish-speaking region or district), where Irish is spoken as the primary language, but these are tiny pockets and usually in rural areas. The purpose of these Gaeltachts are to reinforce and increase the use of the Irish language (and culture) and a comeback of sorts is happening in small areas not considered traditional Gaeltachts (including Dublin City). However, the population of Ireland who speak Irish as their primary language remains at about 2%. While many non-Irish people refer to the Irish language as Gaelic, it's commonly referred to as "Irish", not Gaelic. For example, one would say "do you speak Irish?" and not "do you speak Gaelic?".
Irish is a compulsory subject in all primary and secondary schools. Gaelscoileanna teach all the subjects through Irish. Various colleges offer Irish as a subject from cert. to PhD level.
The two main ethnic groups were CHINESE & IRISH. Im not sure if there were black and white, but CHINESE & IRISH for sure.