Jim Allister condemns 'pandering to a foreign language' as 10 of the 11 people around Stormont committee table don translation headphones so witnesses can speak in Irish

Three members of Conradh na Gaeilge delivered their testimony to the Communities Committee in Irish for about 40 minutes on Thursday.

There were nine MLAs sitting around the committee table, plus two members of Assembly staff.

All except one of them – Sinn Fein MLA Maoliosa McHugh – could be seen donning official headphones as proceedings were translated into English (however, committee chairman Colm Gildernew of Sinn Fein did speak some Irish himself during proceedings).

Two individuals visible in the public gallery needed translation too.

TUV leader Jim Allister described this as “pandering” to a “foreign language” at public expense.

In 2021, the Assembly had voted 58 to 27 to set up a live translation service so that MLAs and those giving evidence to committees could do so in Irish (and Ulster-Scots).

The DUP voted ‘no’ to doing so, despite having agreed to it in the 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal.

At the time, DUP MLAs Thomas Buchanan and Gary Middleton had said that the cost of the service would be about £500,000 per annum.

In 2022, a survey carried out by the Assembly itself found that only 10 out of the 90 MLAs wished to make “substantive contributions in Irish” (with none wishing to do so in Ulster-Scots).

Among the people who were especially outspoken against the translation service was Mr Allister, and on Friday he told the News Letter: “I've said from the outset: it's just an unnecessary squander of money.

"There is nobody who appears before those committees, nor anyone sitting on those committees, who is not perfectly proficient in English.

“That doesn't make any sense to me at a time when public finances are so tight. But that's how things are in the Stormont world.

"You can thank the DUP for this, because they signed up to it.

"Indeed, this week we've had demonstrations from Paul Givan [the education minister] and his mate the speaker [Edwin Poots], that they are now enthusiastic about embracing Irish.”

Asked if people should be compelled to speak in English, Mr Allister said: “I think that they should be required, as in the past, if they're going to speak in a foreign language, to translate it themselves.

"The way it used to be in the Assembly was you could say what you liked in Irish but you then had to proceed to give the English translation – and that didn't cost the public purse.

"That's the way it should be still.”

The same day, Edwin Poots hosted an event at Stormont to mark Irish Language Week.

Speaking to BBC News NI afterwards, he was quoted as saying he did not think unionists had "anything to fear" from the Irish language, adding: "There may have been people who have politicised it at times, but I think the less politicisation there is of our culture, the better.”

Also on Thursday, the former DUP First Minister Paul Givan made similar remarks to Radio Ulster and said that maintaining the Union “is not going to be achieved through a very crude demographic headcount... therefore you have to win hearts and minds”.

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