Letter: I have no problem with the Irish language but it is being weaponised

There was a lively discussion on Friday on BBC Radio Ulster about Belfast City Council proposing the widespread use of bilingual English/Irish signage across the entire city, city facilities and corporate branding and Minister John O’Dowd’s notion of bilingual road direction signs.

On that latter point, it seems this would break an assurance given by the UK government and other supporters of an Irish language act that the use of Irish in that way would not happen under an act. Well, no surprise then that Sinn Fein wants to be contrary. They seem only to be democratic so long as everything goes their way.

I have no problem with the Irish language, except when it is weaponised for a party's political agenda, which is what is happening.

The 2021 Northern Ireland Census said this about the use of Irish as a main language among the population of Northern Ireland:

"On Census Day 2021, English was the main language of 95.4% (1,751,500) of the population aged 3 and over. …….The most prevalent main languages other than English were Polish (20,100), Lithuanian (9,000), Irish (6,000), Romanian (5,600) and Portuguese (5,000).”

In the league table published by the census, Irish speakers came fourth at 0.3% of the population, after Lithuanian speakers at 0.5%. Polish is the largest minority language in Northern Ireland with 1.1% or 20,100 speakers. That’s almost 3.5 times more than those who claim Irish as their main language.

In the Republic of Ireland, their 2016 census showed that less than 4% of the entire population used Irish as their main language.

Some years ago, the nationalist-dominated Students Union at Queen’s University Belfast demanded English/Irish bilingual signage throughout the university campus. When the university authorities pointed out that by far the largest minority language in the student population at that time was Malaysian, the Gaelic clamour dissipated quickly.

So here’s a test of the democratic mettle of Sinn Fein and other supporters of this proposal and their integrity and commitment to inclusivity. If bilingualism is deemed necessary across Belfast and on our road signs, then it should reflect the actual status of minority languages in our society.

Let's then have English/Polish signage.

Martyn Boyd, Bangor, Co Down