There's a fair question about the use of state resources. My take on it is that more state resources are needed for education. Telling kids they can't do Occitan as an optional third language at school because the budget has gone (to undeniably worthy needs) elsewhere, or that they have the choice of their parents paying for private education, looks to me like the kind of destructive arbitrage the right would carry out.

Re native speakers:

redstar:

the language is an idiom that one grew up with and used extensively (thereby gaining fluency) in the regular course of the day (in the family circle, in school and with schoolmates, in other social interactions)

That is exactly what I've been talking about for the >65s, with the exception of "in school" because that was in French.

What's more, there is a generation, now 40-60, that grew up in that environment and understand the language well, but are not in the habit of speaking it because it was understood during their childhood that they should speak French, where the "future lay". Not that entire age-group, obviously, much more the rurals among them, but I know a number of such people.