In the Republic of Ireland, some geographical areas are officially designated as a Gaeltacht. Road signage in these areas is in Irish only (while it is bilingual in the rest of the country), local schools are expected to function exclusively through Irish, and so on. Apart from this legal sense, some people use the word Gaeltacht more loosely to refer to any Irish-speaking area, regardless of its official status. The Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland are also called a Gaeltacht. While the word almost always refers to a place or geographical area, in some older usage it is a collective term for the community of Irish-speaking people everywhere.