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Irish is better than Scottish, isn’t it? More recent reform or something. E.g. for all i know pog mo thoin is spelled poghbhdh moth thoindhbh in Scottish 
Yay, more words I can appear to spell right in French. I always forget the circumflex.
I don’t know anything about Scottish. Since I’m partly of Irish heritage, I bought a book on Irish (and my brother, being more ambitious than I am, actually learned to speak it a little.) Like English, it has a lot of “fossilized” spellings that have remained the same as they were originally even though pronunciation has changed. If Scottish is worse than Irish, it must be truly horrible. 
(And yeah, I understand what “pug mo thoin” means. It was usually pronounced “pugamahone” in the Bronx. :D)
Hmm, that’s interesting. You believe French is worse (very poor) on 1. than English (merely “poor”)? That, I think, would mean that you think that French has more homophones than English, or at least more possible ways to represent a single sound. My studies of French are meager and long ago, but that still seems absurd to me. I’m fascinated by the question though, so I hope others will weigh in.
On 2., yes French has some silent letters, and sometimes letters that are pronounced in one context, but not another. I’m thinking of “ent” in conjugated verbs, and the “s” at the end of word spoken before another word that starts with a vowel. Those are more or less consistent though, right? If you know the spelling and a tiny bit of context, than you still know how to pronounce the word. The one counterexample I’ve ever been told of is “fils”, where the pronunciation varies by meaning. (IIRC wire vs. sons.) That puts French in an entirely different solar system from English with regards to your aspect 2. Maybe Irish Gaelic is in the same solar system. Can I see some examples?
Qûêl dômmâgê!
Also “tous” (TOO – “every”) and “tous” (TOOSE – “all”). But I agree with your general comment.
I remembered from French diction class that circumflex on E changes its pronunciation. It can take an E that would normally be a schwa or silent and make it make the sound as in the English word “jet.”
It also changes for A and O, and I see that those also aren’t losing their circumflex. It doesn’t change for I and U, though, so it makes much sense to drop them.
Wikipedia gives the following pairs of words that are pronounced differently:
pâte vs. patte, tâche vs. tache
prêt vs. pré
hôte vs. hotte, côte vs. cote
I can try to explain the differences in the vowels using English orthography, though it’s a bit difficult due to dialects. Pâte is closer to pot while patte is closer to pat. (not exactly the same, but closer.) Pret is closer to “prep” without the final P, while pré is closer to “pray,” but without the final “y” sound. And côte is closer to “coat” while cote is closer to “caught” (in dialects that pronounce “cot” and “caught” differently.)
(Wikipedia also says that eu is different: jeûne [ʒøn] vs. jeune [ʒœn]. Unfortunately, I can’t really describe the difference between those in terms of English orthography. All I can say is that your jaw is open more for jeune.)