The cost of bi-lingualism in society is enormous. Not only in terms of money spent that could be better spent on other areas of education (to say nothing of the waste of government money in bi-lingual signs, forms, and indeed, court proceedings), but in the fact that bi-lingualism divides, rather than unites a common people. It becomes irrationally politicized and those who oppose dividing society along bilingual lines are demonized (as in the post above). Those who champion the holy grail of forcing the majority of the country to learn a language that was at best spoken by a minority of the population do so without regard for the wishes of the tax paying majority.
I may have misunderstood the issue here: is this funding going toward teaching Gaelic to people who have no connection with the language? You stated that this is "forcing the majority of the country to learn a language that was at best spoken by a minority of the population". Is this really the case? I thought the funding was to teach Gaelic to those parts of the country where it was historically spoken.