Newry Mourne and Down District Council refuses to review plans for Irish signs for predominantly unionist district
Newry Mourne and Down District Council is refusing to hold a review into why it allegedly "buried" a consultation which found that a unionist district did not want Irish language signs, a councillor says.
On 2 June DUP councillors walked out of the council meeting after it voted to impose Irish language signs on all areas - including predominantly unionist ones.
DUP councillors said they had spent six years trying to reason with non-unionists at committee level about the plans.
For around a decade the council has had some 18 boundary signs across the district – headed in Irish – which have been repeatedly vandalised and replaced in areas such as Rathfriland, Killinchy, Saintfield, Ballynahinch and Killyleagh.
UUP councillor David Taylor said unionists approached the issue “constructively” during 12 committee meetings over several years, but that republicans and nationalists “decided to ignore genuine unionist concerns”.
The council has now confirmed to the News Letter that an official consultation meeting with representatives of the Rowallane District Electoral Area (DEA) Forum on 27 September 2023 determined that the area wanted "English only signage".
(The DEA includes settlements such as Ballynahinch, Crossgar and Killyleagh, Derryboy, Kilmore and Saintfield).
However, DUP Councillor Callum Bowsie said the council has now "inexplicably buried" the findings and will be imposing Irish-led signs across the DEA.
At the full council meeting, on 7 July, Mr Bowsie said the DUP asked the chief executive to review the "irregularities".
"We said that key consultation was wrongfully omitted from the report for the signage but that it will be going ahead despite due process not being followed," he said.
"The council management has the power to internally examine procedural irregularities towards unionists without the need for nationalist support, but it would appear they don't intend to do so."
Mr Bowsie said that during the 2023 consultation meeting with Rowallane DEA Forum, all five councillors - as well as four or five community leaders - "put their hands up unanimously for English only signs".
At that stage, he said, the council was just planning to roll the signs out for settlements of over 5000 people.
But then it decided to roll the signs out to all settlements of all sizes.
"But instead of then going out to consult the small settlements as well, they decided that the original consultation was out of date and that they would proceed without any consultation at all.
"So my question is - if a consultation was needed at the start of the project why was it later decided that no consultation at all was needed?"
A council spokesman responded that as this is a statutory process, “it would not be for Council management to review the process as set out in legislation. It should also be reiterated that the DEA Forums do not have decision making powers”.
The consultation was only carried out, it said, to "help inform" the Councillors Reference Group’s discussion on one "potential" approach for larger settlements of over 5000 people.
Various approaches had been initially considered by the Councillors’ Equality and Good Relations Reference Group, however it "failed to reach consensus" on all the way forward, and so it was passed to the Reference Group to deal with, it said.
Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Alliance Party were invited to comment.