Wales is like Ireland should/could have been

Ireland is way more modern than Wales. My defining memory of North Wales in particular was that it was like stepping back 40 years into some kind of 1970s time warp

Although I do think the progress we made infrastructure wise is slowing down.

I totally agree with all of OP sentiments. Welsh is pretty much omnipresent in a lot of areas of north Wales, and eg Anglesey is equivalent to a Gaeltacht area in Ireland, as is the mountainous area of Snowdonia. Throughout Wales you will hear instances of Welsh being spoken, including in the capital, Cardiff, much more so than Ireland. I find the Welsh a little more insular than Irish folk, but if you make the effort to enthuse about local culture, language etc, you will make good friends easily. Like the Scots, and indeed all Celts, they can have a quirky wry sense of humour, which can make encounters interesting. Wales is a wonderful place for a holiday with so much to see and do.

You hear Irish spoken pretty frequently in Gaeltacht contexts here. Where the ferry arrives in North Wales is equivalent to a Gaeltacht. Where you left from, Dublin, is the complete opposite end of the scale - a large anglophone city in the middle of an area that has been a centre of anglophone Ireland for centuries.

If you went from Cardiff to Connemara you’d have a similar experience in terms of spoken language.

Parts of Wales, especially the former mining areas in the south are very much post industrial and lacking in investment for a long time, but it has some very spectacular areas especially in the north too.

The OP’s comparison is a bit deluded, but I’m also a bit disappointed to see all the Wales bashing too. It’s very much a place that we should have a lot more sense of connection with and one that shares many parallels in cultural, linguistic and historical experiences and also managed to maintain an identity, despite no physical separation from and often very unpleasant interaction with England over the centuries.

There are lessons to be learned about how the Gaelic languages have been preserved and survive. Wales definitely has had a positive experience in recent decades with modern teaching of Welsh, and I think there has been a sharing of that experience in both directions.

Bear in mind too that the main streaming of Welsh language in schools there only dates from 1988 with it becoming a compulsory subject in 1999.

Welsh Language Medium education also has had a lot of two way discussions with the Gaelscoil and Gaelcholáiste movements here. They haven’t just co-existed in parallel without any interaction or discussion.

There’s also plenty of interaction for example between TG4, S4C and BBC Alba and between cultural organisations, academics etc etc and has been for a long time.

I think you also have to realise Irish language education has changed a lot since I suspect most of the people commenting were in school. In a lot of contexts it’s more fun, more conversational and also the Irish language medium schools have taken off in a big way in the last 20 years.

I’ve a niece in gaelscoil and her experience of Irish is TOTALLY different to mine back in the 80s and early 90s in primary school. She’s having fun with it and it’s just absorbing.

That’s as much about differences in time as place. Language learning and teaching has moved on.