'This is madness, Sinn Fein are rewriting policy here': Fury as nationalists demand radical reworking of Irish sign results after residents polled
A Sinn Fein demand to radically rework the way surveys for Irish street signs are counted, making them almost impossible to oppose, has been branded “madness”.
The nationalist party has been accused of trying to “totally rewrite” already set Belfast City Council policy, after insisting that officials and all rival politicians “have got it wrong” on polls of residents.
It came as they again attempted to push Irish signs onto streets that failed to reach a minimum level of support for them – including one where fewer than one in 10 people want the signs, and there’s a level of objection.
During a meeting this week the party’s group leader, Ciaran Beattie, once more advanced an argument that surveys have been incorrectly calculated for the last three and a half years, as the results are given as a proportion of everyone who lives on a given street.
Sinn Fein thinks only those who reply should count. According to their logic, if 100 people live on a street and only seven reply to the poll but all seven want Irish signs, that street has “100% support” for them.
The policy states at least 15% of residents have to back dual language signs to see them built. This week, five roads that failed to hit that target were due to be formally rejected by the council; Sinn Fein demanded three of them be approved and two others, including one in a unionist area where five times as many people oppose Irish signs as want them, be delayed and the results potentially recalculated under the nationalist party’s version of the system.
On Willowfield Gardens in east Belfast, 8.7% of residents back Irish signs, while 44.9% are against them. Under Sinn Fein’s version that only people who reply to the surveys should count, that changes to 15.7% in favour which would see them built.
Two streets in nationalist areas of west Belfast failed to hit the 15% threshold as too few people cared about getting Irish signs to fill in surveys, while on Pilot Street in the Sailortown area near the city’s docks, just 10 people out of 92 replied – and one of them was opposed to the idea.
Sinn Fein insisted the two west Belfast roads and Pilot Street should all be approved anyway, to outrage from unionists.
Said DUP group leader Sarah Bunting: “We’ve even gone past the absurdity of ‘there are no objectors so we’ll go ahead’, one of the ones proposed has got an objector. [The two Sinn Fein want delayed] quite clearly have voted against it.
“This is just madness, we’re totally rewriting a whole policy here, when there’s already a review of the policy to come back.”
However Mr Beattie insisted the two nationalist streets that failed to make the 15% threshold actually had “100% of people in support of it”, adding: “It’s bonkers the ways these are being calculated.”
He argued lawyers need to give advice on whether the council’s current system is correct or if it should switch to Sinn Fein’s interpretation, a verdict that’s expected in August.
By a majority of a single vote, the committee put back decisions on all five streets until after a review of the dual language signs system is delivered in late summer.