That book's hardcore. I didn't have the courage to teach from it (I went with the gentle 'Gaeilge agus Failte' though that tries to pretend that Irish really doesn't have grammar and takes a lot time to get anywhere.

Irish pronunciation is a bit of a nightmare alright. The general rule I give people is to pretend the middle bits of words don't really exist most of the time.

This site http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/colinandcumberland/ is quite good for practice, though it's Donegal Irish so you'll find stuff a bit different from the O Siadail's book. But it's got some fun stuff and the games are quite cute.