A last ditch attempt has failed to stop a Belfast Council decision to erect Irish dual language signs on four streets in the city - despite the numbers of residents opposing the Irish signs outnumbering those who support them in each street.
At the April meeting of the full Belfast City Council, a DUP amendment to block a committee decision to stop signs going up at Wynchurch Avenue in East Belfast, Sunningdale Park North and Ben Madigan Park South in North Belfast, and Wellington Park Terrace in South Belfast did not have sufficient numbers in a final vote.
The four streets were all previously deferred as applications for Irish dual language, after they all met the threshold for signage erection, but at the same time had greater numbers opposing the new signage than were in favour.
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At the April meeting of the council’s People and Communities Committee on Tuesday, elected members were asked to agree a proposed mechanism for dealing with deferred applications, after several years of wrangling about what to do in cases where applications met the threshold of 15 percent, but were outnumbered by residents in opposition.
Since 2022, when the new dual language street signage policy was introduced, all applications deferred on the basis of opposition outnumbering support were “put at the back of the queue” - to be reconsidered after those in the considerable waiting list were dealt with.
At the People and Communities Committee, Sinn Féin Councillor Róis-Máire Donnelly proposed moving forward with erecting dual language street signs in Irish on the four streets. She said it was “in line with the minority rights guidance we have signed up to in this policy”.
On a poll in the chamber 11 voted in favour of Councillor Donnelly's proposal, from Sinn Féin and the SDLP, while nine voted against, from the DUP and Alliance.
At the full council meeting this week, a poll on a DUP amendment to stop the signs going up went the same way. 26 votes in favour of the DUP amendment from the Unionist parties and Alliance lost to 31 votes from Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Green Party, and People Before Profit.
DUP Councillor Ruth Brooks said before the last vote in the chamber: “Only in Belfast could a dual language policy be set so low it practically trips over democracy, on its way to enforcing street crime.
“When we stood in this chamber four months ago we heard 'we need to discuss the back of the queue for dual language signs' - the queue that elected members created by deferring applications that they didn’t feel were politically convenient.
“This queue wasn’t a glitch in the system, it was a political intervention, manufactured, delayed, and curated by those who are lamenting its very existence.
“And then the theatre in this chamber began - (they wanted) an evidence based approach, as they voted against the actual evidence returned by the people. We need an international based practice, they insisted, while ignoring the most practical, basic, local and international principle of them all, which is democracy.”
She added: “The process has drifted so far from being evidence based, or community led, and so far from democratic integrity that it is no longer even pretending to be mutual. Consultations are treated like a box-ticking exercise, objections are met with shrugs, silence is spun as consent, and when communities do speak, their voices are folded neatly into the inconvenient pile. And we are told this is progress.”
Sinn Féin Councillor Tomás Ó Néill said: “I don’t understand why people are scared of the Irish language. I don’t understand the constant opposition to it everywhere. There are serious cuts being made to welfare, there are far bigger issues.
“I am listening to high ranking politicians crying on the radio because they don’t want to see a couple of words of Irish - I really don’t get it.”
He added: “The reason the threshold is set at 15 percent is because it is about promoting visibility of minority language rights. It is enshrined in international law, it is nothing to get mad or worked up about - these are standards people want applied all across the world. All we are doing is asking that it is respected in our city here - our indigenous language.”
In terms of figures, Wynchurch Avenue in its first survey had 18 percent in favour of Irish street signs and 26 percent opposing (20 residents to 30 residents) while in its second survey had 15.04 percent in favour and 28.31 percent against (17 residents to 32 residents). Sunningdale Park North had 22 percent in favour and 33 percent in opposition (22 residents to 33 residents), Ben Madigan Park South had 23.18 percent in favour and 26.08 percent against (16 residents to 18 residents), while Wellington Park Terrace had 17.14 percent in favour and 31.42 percent against (6 residents to 11 residents).
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.
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