COUNCIL ROW: No Ulster-Scots at Springfield Dam – Irish signage at Olympia

AN attempt to have Ulster-Scots signage erected at Springfield Dam has been defeated at Belfast City Council.

During Monday’s monthly meeting Alliance proposed to include trilingual signage (English, Irish and Ulster-Scots) at the Council owned facility.

The motion was defeated with the Sinn Féin team acknowledging they appreciated Alliance’s attempt to find a middle ground to the dispute but Sinn Féin council leader Cllr Ciarán Beattie stated that the site was within Blackmountain DEA, which has six Sinn Féin councillors and one SDLP councillor who all support the dual signage (English and Irish) that was originally proposed.

Cllr Beattie also noted the site was in the Gaeltacht Quarter and the Ulster-Scots Agency had never mentioned the possibility of having Ulster-Scots erected on any signs in the area.

Later, DUP members of Belfast City Council made a final attempt to halt the proposal for dual-language signs at Olympia Leisure Centre on the Boucher Road with DUP Cllr Bradley Ferguson stating it was "being forced upon people in a community which do not wish to see it”.

The original motion was first passed in 2021, and a petition backing the initiative was delivered to City Hall in September of the following year.

Following 2021 the proposal was then called in for further review and independent legal opinion. On Monday councillors received the legal advice that the signage would not have any affect on any section of the population in the area, which scuppered the DUP’s attempts to stop it.

As a result, the proposal for dual signage at Olympia was again put to council and was passed by 41 votes to 16.

The issue of Irish signage was also raised over the question of what to do if a street requests Irish language signage alongside English and meets the necessary 15 per cent threshold but also has 50 per cent of residents saying they do not want the signage.

The issue was put to council by Sinn Féin’s Conor McKay concerning signage at Wellington Park Terrace in South Belfast which met the requirements but also had a number of objections.

Sinn Féin suggested a review should be carried out to see what was international best practice in such a case, however, this was refuted by DUP Councillor Dean McCullough who said: “Why don’t we keep asking and re-surveying the street until we get the result we want, because that’s what Sinn Féin want to do.”

Sinn Féin’s Ronan McLaughlin said the party did not want a re-survey but wanted it called back to get an expert opinion.

Cllr Michael Long of Alliance said 15 per cent was recommended but also said they had agreed discretion would also be taken into account.

Responding to this, Green Councillor Áine Groogan said that 15 per cent was democratic when addressing minority rights, stating: “Rights and minority rights are not based to a popular vote. If that was the case, they wouldn’t be rights. Minority rights should not be subject to majority rule."

SDLP Councillor Séamus de Faoite accused the DUP of opposing the signage and of being ‘far-right’ which led to a furious response from DUP Alderman Dean McCullough who said that his relatives and many from his community gave their lives fighting for democracy and against the far-right in the Second World War.

The vote to have expert outside opinion on issues such as this sign passed, with councillors voting 41 to 16.