Sinn Féin complains about delays on Irish signs at Olympia Leisure Centre

Sinn Féin has made a complaint about the length of time it is taking to produce Irish signs at Olympia Leisure Centre and Forth-Meadow Greenway in Belfast.

Councillors raised concerns at a City Hall committee meeting about the installation of dual-language signage at the South Belfast leisure centre and the new greenway, which travels from North Belfast, through the West to the City Centre.

At the May meeting of the Belfast City Council Strategic Policy and Resources Committee (May 23rd), Sinn Féin Councillor Ciaran Beattie criticised not only the delay in Irish signs at the leisure centre and greenway, but also the time it had taken officials at City Hall to come up with a completed Irish Language Policy for Belfast.

Councillor Beattie said: “The Olympia proposal was agreed nearly four years ago, then there was a protracted legal process, two Equality Impact Assessments, multiple consultations, multiple legal challenges and call-ins, and eventually it was agreed last September.

“We are looking for an update on whether these are actually going to be installed, because we see this again as a delay, a delay around the Irish language. We see other projects and proposals coming to this council which are delivered fairly effectively and quickly, but when it comes to the Irish language it takes years and years and years.

“If we look at the Forth Meadow Greenway, that was agreed a month after Olympia, after a long protracted legal process, and again, there has been no movement to my understanding.”

He added: “The Irish Language Policy has, again, been run through a long protracted process. To my understanding that has been completed for a while now, but it still hasn’t come before us for consideration.

“So my question is, why is there a delay? Why is there always a delay around the Irish language? And when are these projects going to be done?”

City Solicitor Nora Largey said: “The committee obviously knows how significant the Irish Language Policy is, and it is really important that we get that right. There was a significant response to that consultation.

"This week (we have been) discussing some of the final details in relation to the costings around the policy, and it is my intention to bring it to party leaders next week so we can discuss timelines.”

She added: “In relation to Olympia and Forth Meadow, there is absolutely no illusion on the part of officers - those projects have been agreed. They need to be brought forward, we need to come to you with timescales on those, and I apologise I don’t have those timescales today, but I am happy to share those with party leaders next week to give definitive times.

“But we understand there has been a delay and we will look to move those forward as expeditiously as possible.”

Councillor Beattie replied: “Again, we are not clear when this is going to be done. That is not acceptable. No officer in this council at any level has the authority to delay the Irish language.

“They don’t have the political cover for it, they don’t have the cover at any level. And we will not be tolerating it directly or indirectly, we do not want the delay around the Irish language any longer. It stops.”

In September 2024 the plan to erect Irish signs at the Olympia council-owned leisure centre in a largely unionist-voting part of South Belfast reached its endgame at the council’s S, P & R Committee.

On a vote 15 councillors voted in favour of Irish signage at Olympia, from Sinn Féin, Alliance, the SDLP and the Greens, while five DUP councillors voted against. A consultation report showed that in the wider Belfast area over 80 percent of respondents said they would be happy to see bilingual signage at the Olympia leisure centre, with 79 percent specifically in favour of Irish being used. The decision was then ratified by the full council.

It has been six years since the original consultation was proposed into the erection of bilingual directional signage at the council’s four city-wide leisure centres at Andersonstown, Olympia, Lisnasharragh and Templemore.

Since then the Olympia matter has seen a decision in favour of Irish signage, a ‘call-in’ of this decision by the DUP, a return to committee level, a consultation on the “final decision” Equality Impact Assessment last year, with various legal delays along the way.

Last October, final recommendations by officials at Belfast Council for dual language signage for the new Forth Meadow Greenway were revealed.

In March 2023 a majority of elected representatives at committee level carried through a decision to have English and Irish signage at the Gaeltacht parts of the greenway, and on the seven metre sculpture at 385 Springfield Road.

This decision was subsequently ‘called in’ by unionists. Information relating to the number of elected representatives who called it in and the party/parties they represent was not furnished by the council.

The call-in in this case was deemed competent on procedural grounds on the basis an equality impact assessment had not been made on proposals for the greenway. The EQIA was then conducted in Autumn 2023.

In March 2024 the S, P & R Committee voted in favour of a proposal in respect of signage for greenway “subject to the beacons, information panels and the directional finger post signs located in the Gaeltacht Quarter area (that is Falls Park, Bog Meadows, Westlink to City Centre and Springfield Park/Dam all being in dual-language, that is, English and Irish.”

The equality screening report suggested tri-lingual language at Springfield Dam, that is English, Irish and Ulster Scots.