Protecting communities through language rights

January 2020 saw the publication of the New Decade New Approach (NDNA) agreement. This agreement brought around the re-establishment of the power-sharing institutions since their collapse in 2017. Like all other major peace agreements that preceded NDNA, the agreement included key commitments regarding the promotion and protection of the Irish language.

What was different this time was that legislation to protect and promote the language was for many the cornerstone component of the agreement, having being identified as the key outstanding issue needing to be addressed during three years of negotiations and talks.

Commitments unfulfilled

NDNA committed to “the official recognition of the status of the Irish language”, and for the first time in a state which historically excluded and discriminated against the Irish language community, the Irish language was to exist in law. Be that as it may, any optimism for the implementation of the NDNA legislation was overridden by a sense of apprehension among the Irish language community; and understandably so.

Decades of broken promises and false dawns, partnered with political resistance and hostility towards the language, had meant that demands for rights for the Irish language and its community had previously remained unanswered; why was this time any different? Recent developments have shown that their apprehensions were indeed, well-founded. Painful experience tells the Irish speaking community that this is an all too familiar cycle of agreements and non-compliance.

The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) saw the first positive commitments to the Irish language; with a commitment to take “resolute action” to promote the language. The difficulty in monitoring compliance with a commitment to ‘resolute action’ comes when attempting to quantify it; one area which the treaty body COMEX have identified to constitute ‘resolute action’ is through “the creation of a legal framework for the promotion of minority languages.” This is a protection which has not yet been afforded to the Irish language community in the north, despite a promise in the 2006 St. Andrew’s Agreement to “introduce an Irish language act based on the experiences of Wales and the south of Ireland.”

Without formal legal protection, Gaeilgeoirí in the north do not enjoy the same rights as are afforded to Welsh speakers in Wales or indeed, other Gaeilgeoirí on this island. The impacts of this absence have been felt right across the Irish language community, specifically within the IM education sector, for whose development the Department of Education (DoE) have a statutory duty to encourage and facilitate.

Statutory duty - DoE

Indeed, the Irish medium education (IME) sector is currently the fastest growing educational sector in the north, with over 7,000 children currently receiving their education through the medium of Irish.

Whilst the sector’s exponential growth is a source of great pride, pobal na Gaeilge are faced with a stark reality that the very department responsible for the facilitation and encouragement of the IME sector don’t actually have an Irish language policy, never mind a strategy to how they promote the sector or the language within education in general.

Indeed, lack of bespoke legislation for Irish has meant that the DoE’s promotion (or lack thereof) of Irish has been entirely dependent upon the will or interpretation of the Minister in charge; unsurprisingly, during the DUP’s reign of the Department, IM schools have seen opposition to much needed development proposals, the withdrawal of vital funding and the production and distribution of GCSE support material in English-only; all of this partnered with a pre-2016 election manifesto to tackle “the preferential treatment of Irish-medium schools.”

Rather than having their bespoke needs identified and addressed, Irish medium schools are regularly left out of mainstream planning, rarely anything more than an afterthought at best, or an annoying bolt-on at worst.

Irish in public life

Demands for equality have been branded by opponents as excessive and unreasonable, despite language expert Fernand de Varennes certifying the very opposite; that the right and opportunity to ‘learn and use’ your native language ‘flows from a fundamental right and cannot be considered a special concession or privileged treatment.’

Language rights exist to solidify the ability to use your language of choice in both public and private life, yet the use of Irish in public life is often restricted to circumstances which are deemed ‘appropriate’ or ‘necessary’.

The inability to use, hear and see Irish in public impedes on the ability of the everyday Irish speaker to live their lives through their language of choice. The absence of legislation means that policy and decision makers have no overarching legal framework to inform service provision through Irish; without laws specifically instructing public services to provide services in Irish, experience has demonstrated that they simply won’t do it.

Due to a perception that the Irish language is “controversial”, civil servants, who are by default risk averse, will choose to stick to the underachieving status quo unless they are compelled or instructed to take progressive action to promote the language.

One might argue that in the absence of a legal responsibility, there should exist a moral obligation to fulfill the language rights of the Irish language community. This has not been the case; it is currently illegal to speak Irish in court here, or for Irish to be contained in any court documentation despite similar Acts being abolished in England, Scotland and Wales in 1863.

Irish speakers cannot access the Giant’s Causeway audio tour in Irish, despite the fact that it is available in 11 other languages. Campaigns which seek to increase the visibility of Irish in third level institutions are “provocative, offensive and intimidatory.”  The future of Irish language youth services are continuously under threat by the Education Authority.

Language promotion is largely absent from local councils, with few exceptions. The absence of a legal framework has long facilitated the denial of public authorities providing basic services to Irish speakers in Irish. Whilst legislation wouldn’t be a panacea for all of the problems which the Irish language and its community face, it would help inform their expectations, and would provide clarity to public services with regard to Irish language service provision.

Ón bhun aníos

What is more, and perhaps most surprisingly, the absence of bespoke legislation for Irish has been compounded by insults and attacks, not from the margins, but from mainstream political parties. The actual absence of legislation creates a vacuum of policy and legal insulation that facilitates an environment where such attacks seem ‘par of the course’.

Any attempt to address the question of the Irish language was publicly mocked, ridiculed and disregarded by those same Unionist Ministers who continue to oppose it. This had seen little progress made on the question of Irish language rights until community-led initiatives which called for rights, recognition and respect for the Irish language catapulted the issue right into the very heart of the political discourse in the north.

An Dream Dearg’s #AchtAnois campaign was born on the back of an extremely politically charged year at Stormont (2016), harshly complimented by DUP Communities Minister, Paul Givan’s decision to withdraw a £50,000 Líofa bursary grant in the same month that his party were coming under scrutiny for the squandering of £500 million under the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). This crisis demonstrated the crass nature in which the state were dealing with the language and sparked widespread condemnation across communities.

An Dream Dearg’s #AchtAnois campaign sought to have language rights viewed as human rights and to give a voice to a community that had been marginalised for so long, whilst drawing attention to the broader question of an Irish language act.

The demand for an Irish language act is not an attempt to promote an overtly political agenda, nor is it an attempt to erode the identity of others; it comes from the understanding that there is a growing community of speakers who deserve to have their right to use and see their language protected by law.

Whilst critics will demand the pursuit of Irish language rights “political”, activists remind us that the pursuit of legal protections is by it’s very content a political pursuit, one of many that is unfortunately now essential to ensure the Irish language is recognised in law.

The foundation of the campaign was pivotal in inspiring and awakening, or re-awakening, participation from activists. It empowered, organised and inspired communities and provided them with the skillset to challenge inequalities, to hold decision makers to account and to demand better.

The #AchtAnois campaign encouraged people to take ownership of the language and built upon the humble seeds of the pioneers that came before, most notably Gaeltacht Bhóthar Seoighe, whose ‘ná habair é, déan é’ [don’t say it, do it] attitude demonstrated an unwillingness to sit back and wait for those in power.

Since it’s foundation, An Dream Dearg’s community-led campaign has drawn national/international attention and indeed underpinned the very content of the historic language legislation published in January 2020.

The #AchtAnois campaign has demonstrated that ordinary people can make meaningful change and has importantly drawn widespread attention to the pressing need for legislative protections here for the Irish language community, something which has not yet been achieved.

So what’s next?

Two main challenges remain; firstly sustaining that extremely active, engaged and organised language community, whose participation has proven transformational in the modern-day Irish language revival.

Secondly, in ensuring the fulfilment of all commitments to the Irish language in their entirety and building upon those foundations. The provisions afforded in January 2020 fell far short from what was promised to our community in 2006 and even once enacted, as has been well documented, there will still remain a need for a comprehensive Irish language act. This legislation does not fulfil the 2006 St Andrew’s Agreement, nor does it meet the international standard for what language legislation should be if it is to be effective and appropriate.

So, as another election period dawns with the Irish language remaining an outstanding issue once again, it would seem that little has changed. Just as they did in 2014 and 2017, An Dream Dearg, along with thousands of others, will be marching to Belfast city centre on the 21st May 2022 with that very same message - Acht Anois.