Editorial: Sinn Fein's intervention to impose Irish in Grand Central station is a glimpse of how Gaelic will be deployed on Northern Ireland
Morning View on Wednesday March 26 2025:
It is a marvel to behold. The contrast between the victimhood in which the Irish language activists were allowed to cloak themselves and the aggressive advance of Irish.
The Sinn Fein decision to impose Irish on Grand Central station is an utter waste of money given that it is a language that a tiny percentage of the Northern Ireland public can speak well.
But it is only the smallest glimpse of what is coming on Gaelic, as Belfast City Council’s sectarian and provocative Irish policy has shown.
This won’t stop until every department that comes under Sinn Fein control, and perhaps one day departments that come under SDLP and Alliance control, adopts an interventionist Irish policy, even if it happens over several parliaments.
The aim of republicans is to mark territory, ultimately including the entire territory of Northern Ireland, first to make unionists feel uncomfortable, but second to make it seem as if there is no difference between the Republic of Ireland and NI.
Because changing all signage in hospitals and streets and so on is an immense undertaking it will happen slowly over decades. But happen it assuredly will.
The DUP capitulation on the insistence of some of its top politicians that they would never accede to an Irish language act, which in fairness happened under the context of Sinn Fein blackmail facilitated by the likes of the one-time Tory secretaries of state Julian Smith and Chris Heaton-Harris, means this will get much worse.
It is true that the Irish language act we now have (it is misleading to suggest it is merely part of some balanced cultural legislation) is not the most radical set of laws possible. But this solo run by SF in the executive, and Belfast’s language policy in which streets that are 85% opposed to Irish signage can have it imposed, shows that the provocative use of Irish will not just happen under the auspices of a Gaelic commissioner.