A Belfast Council committee has voted for an Irish bilingual street sign to be erected without a survey or wider consultation on a street with 'no properties' close to the city centre.
Councillors this month were posed with two unusual applications for Irish dual language street signs - one for a street in Belfast with no occupiers, and another with no one yet registered on the electoral register.
The two South Belfast streets, Raphael Street off Cromac Street, and McClure Street off the Lower Ormeau Road, presented particular complexities for council officers and elected representatives at a Belfast City Council committee meeting this month.
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The council’s People and Communities Committee received applications for Irish dual language street signs at both streets, despite the fact no-one lives on Raphael Street, and those who live on McClure Street have only moved into the new houses there recently, and as such, are not on the electoral register.
On top of this, both streets are recognised as being part of the city business core, and require further public consultation, in the form of newspaper adverts, as part of the council’s current dual language street sign policy.
The council states that for applications in the city core, policy requires that “adverts are placed in Belfast Telegraph, Newsletter and Irish News to give the community of users an opportunity to provide representations in relation to the proposal.” The “community of users” is not defined, and questions have been raised about this aspect of policy consultation.
In 2022 councillors agreed a new policy on dual language street signs. Sinn Féin, Alliance, the SDLP, the Green Party, and the People Before Profit Party all support the new street sign policy, while the three unionist parties, the DUP, UUP and PUP, are against it.
The new policy means at least one resident of any Belfast street, or a councillor, is all that is required to trigger a consultation on a second nameplate, with 15 percent in favour being sufficient to erect the sign. Non-responses will no longer be counted as “against” votes, and there will be an equality assessment for each application.
Before that the policy required 33.3 percent of the eligible electorate in any Belfast street to sign a petition to begin the process, and 66.6 percent to agree to the new dual language sign on the street.
The council committee report on the recent applications state: “In relation to Raphael Street there are no properties located on the street and therefore no occupiers residing on the street to be surveyed.
“There are a number of other streets in the immediate area which have been approved for dual language signs (Cromac Street, Catherine Street, Eliza Street Terrace, Lower Stanfield Street and Upper Stanfield Street).
“The adjacent street (McAuley Street) failed to meet the minimum 15 percent threshold when surveyed in January 2025 and this application has been closed.”
It adds: “However, as this street has no occupiers and it has not been possible to carry out a survey, members are asked to consider if the application should proceed to additional consultation.”
It adds: “McClure Street has 22 newly constructed properties which have recently become occupied. There are currently no residents registered on the electoral register, and therefore no data to allow the completion of a survey in accordance with policy.
“In addition, there are no other properties located on this street in which the views of occupiers, owners or tenants in possession can be canvassed. The electoral office has advised that electoral information is continually updated as new registrations are received with a new publication of the list created each December.
“They have also advised they will write to occupants of new properties providing an opportunity to register but this is a voluntary process. In these circumstances it is proposed that the application survey be deferred until publication of the new electoral list in December 2025 to allow for the standard process to take place.”
SDLP Councillor Gary McKeown said he believed the extra consultation for Raphael Street for “the community of users” was “an unnecessary cost” and he proposed going ahead with putting the signs up in that street. For McClure Street he proposed that the council “seek a deputation of the new householders in that street.”
DUP Councillor Sarah Bunting said: “I think it was Councillor McKeown himself who said it was shameful not to go out to consultation on a street sign last month, so I would oppose that proposal.”
Councillor McKeown replied: “Just to clarify, my point is clearly in relation to individuals who live on the street - I think it is exceptionally important that individuals who do live on the street are given the opportunity to respond. In this circumstance there are no residents on the street.
“It is not that I am evading the opportunity for democracy, I just think in this particular circumstance that the model in place is inappropriate. Firstly, this is not the city centre, I consider this is the Market, which is a discreet community. And secondly, the model isn’t particularly enforceable, as anyone could identify. Tens of thousands of people from across the city could reply, people from outside the city or outside the country could respond.”
He added: “In the absence of any residents living on Raphael Street, the fact it is clearly part of a community in which bilingual street signs already exist, and it is adjacent to Cromac Street, which has bilingual signage, I propose we proceed with bilingual signage on that street.”
A proposal by DUP Councillor Bunting to have additional consultation for Raphael Street, and defer the McClure Street application to allow sufficient time for electoral register updates, fell on a knife edge vote. The DUP proposal received nine votes in support, from the DUP and Alliance, with 11 votes against it, from Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Green Party.
The committee voted to proceed by erecting the bilingual street signs in Irish at Raphael Street and defer the McClure Street application for an electoral register update. This decision will have to be ratified at the full council meeting next month.
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