Once a cold house for Irish language, Belfast City Hall on verge of era of 'Céad Míle Fáilte'

IT’S NOT THAT long ago that Belfast City Hall was a cold home for the Irish language, but a significant step has been taken this week to make the city council on Lagan-side perhaps one of the most welcoming local authorities for Gaeilge on the island.

At a meeting of the council last night, a majority of councillors voted in favour of a £1.9m budget to implement the draft Irish language policy. The council will give its final approval to the policy for implementation at a meeting of the strategic policy and resources committee within a fortnight.

True to tradition on matters to do with the Irish language, at Monday’s meeting there was a dispute between Sinn Féin’s Ciarán Beattie and Dean McCullough of the DUP.

According to Beattie, the DUP were always objecting to anything to do with the Irish language, an approach he said some might consider to be racist.  He said it had probably cost rate payers hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees.

McCullough wasn’t too happy with this and challenged Beattie to say whether he believed the DUP was racist.

“You’re anti-Irish,” responded Beattie.

The back and forth continued for a while before Lord Mayor Tracy Kelly intervened to suggest to both councillors to desist as the Council chamber was not a school yard.

In terms of robust exchanges in the Council chamber over the years on topics to do with the Irish language, this was less the Battle of Clontarf and more a proverbial bunfight.

The comprehensive document has had to overcome opposition from the DUP whose elected representatives expressed their displeasure with the policy at Monday’s meeting. However, non-Unionist parties have a majority on the Council and so the proposal overcame that opposition.

According to the draft policy, a citizen who requests a service in Irish should receive a fully equal experience. The council is also committing to promoting the Irish language in public life and to taking a determined approach to promoting the language.

The council’s stationery and public signage will be bilingual once the policy has received its final blessing. There are many other policies in the document that may arouse envy, perhaps, from residents in towns and cities south of the border where Irish is the first official language but there is no appropriate policy in some places to put flesh on the bones of that commitment in the Constitution.

Conchúr Ó Muadaigh, advocacy manager of Conradh na Gaeilge, welcomed the council’s allocation of £1.9m for the implementation of the policy.

Now that the first tranche of money has been agreed, we should see the final version of the policy itself passed by the Council in the coming weeks, with an action plan added to ensure spending priorities for that £1.9m.

“Significant changes will now occur to the Council’s branding, corporate image, services, signage, logo and digital services,” said Ó Muadaigh.

“Belfast is now a new city, with a whole new Irish-speaking community flourishing, one that is loud and organised and sensitive to language rights.

“More investment will be needed to make a city built solely on English amenable to the bilingual provision that will be the cornerstone of this new policy.”

This progress is another milestone on a long road that activists for language rights in the north have been pursuing and, in recent years, the pressure on the authorities has increased due to campaigns and large-scale marches organised by organisations such as Conradh na Gaeilge and movements such as An Dream Dearg.

The next major event by An Dream Dearg will be in Dublin on 20 September when Irish language groups from all over the island will be taking to the capital to demand housing in the Gaeltacht, more support for Irish in the education system, proper funding for Irish and language organisations and more.