Irish Language Act: Objection to £261,0000 spent on Irish marriage registration system - before assembly approval - for 18 requests per year

This week Finance Minister Conor Murphy formally announced that births, marriages, civil partnerships deaths can now be registered in Irish, as part of a phased response to a New Decade New Approach commitment.

Mr Murphy said: “Until now birth, marriage, civil partnerships and death certificates could only be produced in English. The public will now have more choice when it comes to registering births, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths as headings for new registrations can now be in English, Irish, or Bi-lingual English and Irish.”

He added that he would now like to see further stages moving towards the full registration process being conducted in Irish.

Mr Murphy made the announcement on Tuesday - after the assembly approved the proposals 29 votes to 58.

However, during the debate, TUV leader Jim Allister raised several concerns.

“Astoundingly” he said, when the Finance Committee looked at the proposals and asked for evidence to justify them, it discovered that the Department of Finance (DoF) had already decided to spend £261,000 to upgrade an IT system to facilitate the Irish language changes.

Mr Allister said the Department had “presumed” that the Finance Committee and Assembly would support the expenditure of £261,000.

“That amount of money would employ eight nurses for a year, but the [DoF] registrar thought that it was appropriate to spend that extravagant amount of money on the IT upgrade before ever bringing any proposal next or near the Committee,” he told MLAs.

This information, he said, prompted the committee to ask what the demand was for such spending. “Here, the story gets even more astounding, because the answer was, ‘We have had one or two calls a month’...”.

He added: “The average of that might be 18 people a year asking for the facility to record marriage details in Irish. In response to that, it was thought to be appropriate to spend over a quarter of a million pounds.”

He added that on the same day he had attended a cancer project meeting.

“There is a worthy cause that is crying out for funds, but the House and the Department think that it is more important to squander £261,000 to meet the needs of 18 people a year.”

He also objected that “tens of thousands of people” in NI speak Polish as their first language but “there is no such facility for them”.

He described the £261,000 as “wanton squander” which is “unnecessary, selective for one community and one community only — when there are crying-out needs in this community for expenditure on real needs, not pet-project needs or ego-stroking needs but real needs.”

The Department of Finance and Sinn Fein were invited to comment.

Conchúr Ó Muadaigh, Advocacy Manager from Conradh na Gaeilge, commented: “This is a small but significant step for the Irish language community. Irish speakers have long since been denied the opportunity to avail of official certificates in the language of their choice.

“This new process will facilitate that choice, for those who wish to access documents in Irish or bilingually. That choice will not effect those who do not wish to use or see Irish on their documents.

“These are very basic services available across these islands. We encourage the Department of Finance to continue this work and to bring through the next stage of the registration processes in Irish as soon as possible. Small steps like these should be recognised as inclusive developments recognising the language in law after decades of marginalisation.”

The DoF said in a statement: “It is not possible to quantify the demand for Irish certificates as no records of requests have been retained.

“However this is part of the New Decade New Approach commitment to give the public more choice.

“There was a cost of £261k linked with the development of the IT system. Normal Departmental procedures were followed in approving the expenditure. A business case was produced and signed off in accordance with the delegated limits.”

They added that “there are no ongoing costs for the provision of a certificate in Irish”, with certificates in either language costing the same.

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