• ‘To Be British, Irish, or Both’: Understanding Language Rights as a Tool for Reconciliation in Northern Ireland
ABSTRACT

Language rights and the official recognition of languages other than English have proved a source of tension in political negotiations in Northern Ireland. The recognition of Irish and the provision of rights for Irish users have been portrayed as representing an unacceptable elevation of ‘republican’ or ‘nationalist’ values. While an agreement to provide for language rights was included in the ‘New Decade, New Approach’ agreement, subsequent legislative change has been lacking. Building on existing work that queries bright-line associations between linguistic, political and community identities in Northern Ireland, this article traces the development of language rights in the jurisdiction and argues that official languages legislation has potential as a source for reconciliation. The article also argues that such an approach to language rights can offer a coherent basis from which to establish new models for constitutional linguistic recognition in a united Ireland or in a newly constituted Northern Irish state.

[End Page 172]

Nationalists who claim the Irish language as their own property have no right to do so, and unionists who label Irish a foreign language don’t know their own history.1

INTRODUCTION

In the end, the particular status of the language both parties spoke proved to be one of the most troubling sticking points during negotiations to resume power-sharing in Stormont in 2020. Following the collapse of the coalition led by the DUP and Sinn Féin in 2017, Northern Ireland was without a government for just over three years. While the initial collapse was driven by a combination of policy disagreements over power-sharing, the retirement of party leaders and the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, just over three years later, these factors were not the source of the stalling of negotiations to resume the Assembly.2 Rather, the professed position of the parties was that it was the status of English as the sole official language in Northern Ireland, and the need for the recognition of the Irish language, that was keeping Stormont shuttered.3

Language rights are divisive in Northern Ireland, where linguistic allegiance has frequently been portrayed as synonymous with discrete religious and political affiliations. This superficial dichotomy sees Irish speakers as nationalist and Catholic, and speakers of the other minority language in the jurisdiction, namely Ulster-Scots, as unionist and Protestant. There are, equally, practical historical and sociological reasons to dispute these neat categorisations of languages and identities that enjoy no overlap or intersection, and these have been ably explored elsewhere.4 This article builds on the work of those other [End Page 173] accounts of linguistic, political and ideological identities in Northern Ireland and, in light of the findings of those scholars, considers how language rights have developed (and failed to develop) in Northern Ireland, and how they might serve as a basis for reconciliation in the future. In particular, the article argues that existing language rights projects such as Turas in East Belfast illustrate the potential of language learning in revealing how Northern Irish identities may not only be constructed as ‘British, Irish, or both’, as envisioned by the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), but determined by none of these external structures of identity—or by a combination of all of them.

In this respect, the article offers some initial thoughts on the benefits of representing the needs of minority language users from all communities in any legislation that is introduced in Northern Ireland, and outlines a nascent list of the particular factors that should be considered for inclusion in legislation to ensure that language rights or language planning provisions serve all communities and users, rather than extant users or those whose communities have traditionally spoken or used that language. The article thus makes an initial contribution to thinking about the incorporation of language rights in contexts of future constitutional change and reconciliation following Brexit, as part of the ARINS project.5

LANGUAGE, COMMUNITY AND IDENTITY IN NORTHERN IRELAND

As in Ireland, the majority language of Northern Ireland is English, where it is also (and unlike in the Republic of Ireland) the sole official language. Alongside the English-speaking population, there are subsets of the population in Northern Ireland who use and speak the minority languages of Irish and Ulster-Scots. Northern Ireland’s census data from 2011 show that slightly over 10 per cent of the population in the jurisdiction have some competence in Irish, while just over 8 per cent have some competence in Ulster-Scots.6 This endurance is, in some respects, unsurprising—the Irish language, which [End Page 174] was spoken throughout Ireland by a majority of the population until the mid-nineteenth century, has historically been particularly strong (perhaps even strongest) in Ulster.7 Moreover, Ulster was historically an area of complex and intersecting linguistic identities. Alongside an indigenous community of Irish speakers who used English for official purposes (as was often required by law), communities of Scots Gaelic and Scots users arrived in the province during the Plantation of Ulster in 1609.8 While Scots Gaelic had significant similarities to Irish and appears to have been largely overtaken by the latter language, or at least incorporated into a distinctly Northern Irish dialect of Irish, Scots eventually evolved to become modern Ulster-Scots.9

As a result of population loss, emigration and legal prohibitions, by the time of the partition of Ireland in 1921 the areas of the island where Irish remained the dominant language (spoken by more than 80 per cent of the population) were largely limited to Western coastal regions, though there remained large areas across the country where up to 50 per cent of the population spoke the language—including parts of Antrim and Tyrone.10 Without supports similar to those afforded to linguistic communities in Ireland, however, and in the presence of often active hostility to Irish use and Irish speakers, intergenerational transmission of the language in Northern Irish communities rapidly declined.11

At present (and unlike in Ireland), Irish is strongest in Northern Ireland’s urban areas—particularly in West Belfast, which has a designated Gaeltacht Quarter, and where the unofficial Falls Road Gaeltacht was established by community members in the 1960s—but also enjoys a strong presence in the rural district of Carntogher (An Carn) near Maghera in County Derry.12 Scots Gaelic appears not to have endured into modern use as a distinct language in Northern Ireland—the speakers presumably converted either to English or Scots, or to the Ulster dialect of Irish, which bears strong similarities to [End Page 175] Scots Gaelic.13 The Scots language appears to have had continued inconsistent use, with a gradual transition towards a distinctive Ulster-Scots, though its status has at times been contested, with some arguing it should be considered a dialect of English rather than a distinct language.14 Modern speakers of Ulster-Scots are predominantly rural and largely confined to the historical areas of Scottish settlement on the north coast of Antrim, the Ards Peninsula, East Down and East Donegal (the latter now being in the Irish republic).15

As between these linguistic groups—users of Irish and Ulster-Scots—the perception has traditionally been that linguistic identities mapped directly onto community divisions, such that Ulster-Scots speakers were viewed as ‘belonging’ to unionist (and frequently Protestant) communities and Irish speakers were associated to nationalist (and frequently Catholic) communities.16 This can, perhaps, be attributed to the geographic distribution of these minority language groups,17 but the division has been reinforced by the political use of both languages as cultural symbols of particular communities.18 The result has been that both minority languages have often been perceived as divisive, and that identity claims based on language in Northern Ireland have come to be perceived as sectarian.19 Thus, while Irish was historically not associated (or exclusively associated) with particular political groups, it came to be associated with Irish nationalism broadly from the early twentieth century, a timeline that mirrors the parallel abandonment by unionism of the model of Irish unionism and its move towards a model that rejected Irish [End Page 176] identity.20 These parallel shifts lead, in Mac Póilín’s account, to ‘an almost complete polarization of unionist and nationalist perspectives on the language’.21

Following this divergence, Irish was progressively perceived as being associated exclusively with nationalist communities—an association reinforced by the use of Irish by republican prisoners and in republican slogans, as well as by the emergence of community-led developments such as the Shaw’s Road Gaeltacht in Belfast, which was situated in a traditionally nationalist community.22 Subsequently, Irish cultural centres in Belfast and Derry and civil and community organisations focused on the Irish language and on language rights have sought to rearticulate the position of Irish as an apolitical feature of everyday life.23 However, these efforts have failed to displace the legacy of the language’s political use in conflict or to resolve the politically precarious position the language has occupied as a result—functioning as a proxy for other sectarian divisions. In this vein, the DUP has advocated ‘the promotion of Ulster-Scots language, history and culture’ not on its own merits but on the basis that there is ‘too much focus on Gaelic culture’ in Northern Ireland.24 Nationalist parties, including Sinn Féin and the SDLP, in contrast, have generally favoured the provision of language rights legislation, with the former Sinn Féin leader Martin McGuinness citing the failure to legislate for the recognition of the Irish language among the reasons for his resignation as deputy first minister.25

These calculated political acts have also, on occasion, devolved into statements about linguistic minorities couched in terms of such vexatious frivolity that by taking them seriously, advocates for and users of the targeted languages themselves appear unreasonable. The DUP’s Gregory Campbell was briefly barred from Stormont in 2014 after he addressed the speaker of the [End Page 177] assembly in a parody of Irish, saying ‘Curry my yogurt can coca coalyer.’26 The remark was apparently intended as a phonetic parody of the Irish Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle (thank you, Mr Speaker), though the finer points of insight he was attempting to communicate resist translation. The offence that his statement caused and his subsequent suspension were seen as an indication of the kind of Irish-speaking hegemony that might accompany official recognition of the language, as part of a society in which, as the Reverend Mervyn Gibson stated, ‘Irish identity [would be furthered] in a way that puts it above the British identity.’27

The remarks of Campbell and others illustrate that, as far as Irish is concerned, minority language users are perceived as being as incomprehensible as their demands are ridiculous. And yet it is not only Irish that has received such treatment. In 2014, positions advertised trilingually within the PSNI—in Ulster-Scots and Irish as well as in English—attracted derision from the public and media, who argued that as Ulster-Scots was readily understandable by those not claiming to be users of the language, it could not reasonably be considered a minority language.28 Nor was this an isolated incident. Concerns have been repeatedly voiced that Ulster-Scots is not a language but rather a distinctive dialect, and that the practice of treating it as other than this constitutes a form of ‘linguistic tokenism’ used to appease sections of the Protestant community in the face of increasing support for Irish.29 The irony, of course, is that these attitudes treat minority language users as being either too difficult to understand or too easy. In either respect, their claims for recognition are seen as risible. This dismissal of Ulster-Scots, no less than the denigration of Irish, ignores (and implicitly rejects) the validity of the social and cultural meanings attributed to the language by its speakers and deliberately denies the reality of their lived experience as a distinct linguistic community,30 not least in circumstances where there is clear evidence of the self-identification of Ulster-Scots speakers and an expressed desire on their part for greater visibility of their language in public spaces.31 [End Page 178]

These incidents, of course, might be taken in a somewhat lighter way if they were not part of a broader attitude that views attempts to accommodate Irish and Ulster-Scots speakers as fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of English speakers.32 The implication of Reverend Gibson’s statement, in particular, is that there are only two mutually exclusive identities in Ulster (British and English speaking, and Irish and Irish speaking) and that one of those identities (and languages) deserves legal and institutional recognition, while the other does not. It is not only that the stereotypes on which these political divisions are premised—of unionist and Protestant English and Scots users, and nationalist and Catholic Irish users—are outdated, but, more fundamentally, that they are both historically and contemporaneously inaccurate, representing a fragmentary view of linguistic capacity and its intersections with other markers of identity in Northern Irish society.33

As Ó Mainnín has documented, the support of the Protestant churches for Irish historically far outstripped that of the Catholic Church—indeed, it was the Church of England that first translated the Bible into Irish.34 Ó Snodaigh, Blayney and Malcolm have similarly illustrated the intersections of Irish-speaking identities and Protestant and unionist ones—both historically and contemporaneously.35 These authors have all highlighted the extensive evidence of the existence of robustly bilingual unionist communities in Northern Ireland up to the early twentieth century—and not only in rural or middle-class urban settings (as was often the case in the Irish republic) but across a range of geographic and class backgrounds.36

Recognising this diversity of Northern Ireland’s language groups and their diverging and intersecting collective and individual identities is important. Recognition vindicates minority language users’ dignity as citizens and legitimates their participation in social institutions on their own terms by acknowledging that such groups have existed as active participants in the forming of the state, and continue to form crucial portions of the communities [End Page 179] that compose the nation group—however it is ideologically conceptualised.37 In contrast, neglecting or deliberately obstructing the recognition and use of any language, but in particular a minority language, has been established as leading to strong feelings of powerlessness, discrimination and devaluing on the part of the language’s users and provoking correspondingly intense political and social reaction against the institutions that have opposed or neglected the rights of that community.38 This intensity is often compounded, in the account that Fishman has developed, by the inevitable increase in public consciousness that accompanies increased visibility of minority languages and their users and that focuses attention on the mechanisms used by majority language users to consolidate power to themselves.39 What is perhaps most important, in this analysis of the conflicts that can result from minority language recognition (or non-recognition), is that it is not linguistic diversity or the existence of minority language users that causes conflict but rather the denial of recognition and associated rights to those groups, and the process of ‘competitive nation building’ and permanent marginalisation that results from the state’s denial of minority languages’ existence and minority language identities.40

And yet, responses that seek to recognise minority languages must also face the allegations—evident in the rhetoric outlined above—that by promotion of a minority language, the dominant linguistic group is discriminated against. May has unpicked arguments premised on this dichotomy and has argued, with some success, that minority language decline has consistently occurred in contexts of bilingualism and multilingualism when languages are in contact, i.e. that if there is a language that is in danger in multilingual orders, it is never the already dominant tongue.41 Certainly, the example of Ireland’s approach to the Irish language illustrates (unfortunately) that official recognition and other mechanisms employed to date (and whose [End Page 180] strength it is not proposed to match in Northern Ireland) are not sufficient to sustain purely Irish-speaking or even strongly bilingual communities on the broad basis envisioned when the measures were implemented, let alone be sufficiently effective to result in a statistical, social or economic disenfranchisement of English speakers.

In seeking to engage with these concerns of majority language speakers, however, and to work towards a recognition of Northern Ireland’s linguistically diverse history (and present reality), it is important to do two things. The first is to establish that such narratives are premised on false equality between languages in which both enjoy equal use or recognition, with even minor social or legal changes tipping the balance irrevocably in favour of the minority linguistic group. This is not the case, and legitimating arguments that begin from this premise risks legitimating concerns of the majority linguistic community that have no factual basis and that heighten moral panic in a way that portrays minority language users as aggressors, seeking to remove rights from the majority population.42 The second is to acknowledge that if there is to be legislative provision for language rights, legislation must be designed in a way that recognises the plurality of linguistic identities in Northern Ireland (including, I would suggest, Ulster-Scots), and that such legislation will be most effective (and can be depoliticised and oriented as part of a process of reconciliation most effectively) where it seeks to recognise and affect the rights not only of existing minority language users but also of every citizen to access language learning resources and rediscover the complexity of the linguistic identities that historically characterised their home places and communities.

As is considered below, this may require that different communities within Northern Ireland be afforded different (perhaps radically different) legislative and policy supports to access and engage with minority languages. In this respect, the most effective legislative model that can be proposed in Northern Ireland may look different not only from comparable legislation in Ireland, Wales and Scotland, but perhaps also from traditional language rights legislation more broadly. [End Page 181]

AGREEMENT, STAGNATION, REGRESSION, REPEAT: LANGUAGE RIGHTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Despite this linguistic diversity, the UK and Northern Irish governments have made only minimal provision for the recognition of linguistic minorities within the jurisdiction. The attitude of the Northern Irish government at the point of partition, while the government of the new Irish Free State was already concerned with the need to preserve Irish-speaking communities, has been described as ‘malevolent neglect’.43 The government of Northern Ireland withdrew funding for the teaching of Irish in schools in the early 1920s and removed questions concerning Irish speaking from the census in 1926.44 The Stormont administration had withdrawn all funding for Irish teaching and Irish-language teacher training colleges by 1942, and seven years later prohibited the erection of street signs in any language other than English,45 while members of the public were later arrested for speaking in Irish to state authorities.46

The 1998 GFA recognised ‘the importance of respect, understanding, and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland, the Irish language’47 and the UK government committed, as part of the Agreement, to ‘resolute action to promote the language’, with a range of more specific measures expressly foreseen in the context of the UK’s active commitment to signing the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML).48 This nascent language rights agenda was extended by the British– Irish Council (BIC), established under the GFA to promote dialogue between the UK’s devolved administrations, which has included as one of its areas of concern (since 2002) indigenous minority languages and the need to improve institutional and public attitudes to such languages and increase their public [End Page 182] visibility.49 In addition to this, the GFA led to the establishment of six north– south implementation bodies on the island of Ireland, including the Language Body comprising Foras na Gaeilge (the Irish Language Agency) and the Ulster-Scots Agency/Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch, both with an all-island remit and which received funding from the two governments on the island for the promotion of their relevant languages.

However, the supports for minority languages provided in the GFA were qualified by the stipulation that the newly devolved Northern Ireland Assembly would sustain its commitments to the indigenous languages recognised ‘in a way which takes account of the desires and sensitivities of the community; being a divided community, the desires and sensitivities of its people traditionally have differed in relation to languages, as we have seen’.50 The Northern Ireland Act 1998 gave legal effect to the GFA, with paragraph 28D including provision for ‘Strategies relating to Irish language and Ulster-Scots language etc.’ and specifying that the executive committee of the Assembly would adopt two distinct strategies setting out how it proposed to (i) ‘enhance and protect the development of the Irish language’ and (ii) ‘enhance and develop the Ulster-Scots language, heritage, and culture’.51 The GFA was followed (in 2003) by the Joint Declaration by the British and Irish Governments, which did not advance the issue of language rights but reiterated that the British government would ‘continue to discharge all its commitments under the Agreement in respect of the Irish language’ and ‘take steps to encourage support to be made available for an Ulster-Scots academy’.52

It was only in 2001, however, when the UK ratified the ECRML with regard to Irish and also to Ulster-Scots, that a tangible outcome of these commitments materialised. The ECRML requires the government to periodically report on policy improvements regarding language rights to a European committee of experts, but the substantive commitments made under the ECRML were limited. The commitment made by the UK in respect of Ulster-Scots was ratified only under Part II (Article 7) of the Charter, which commits the state to recognising Ulster-Scots as a regional minority language within Northern [End Page 183] Ireland, granting it the same level of recognition as Scots in Scotland, and sets out objectives for the facilitation of the language in public life and to respect the language. Irish received somewhat broader commitments, being ratified under Parts II and III, which in addition to providing for official recognition of the language provided measures through which the use of the language was to be promoted in public life, including through education; judicial authorities; administrative and public authorities; media, economic, cultural and social life; and trans-frontier exchanges (including cross-border relations).53 If given legislative effect, these provisions would mirror provisions in language rights legislation in other jurisdictions in the UK that provide for official use of minority languages, in particular in individual interactions with the state, and for visibility of minority languages in public spaces.

However, no substantive legal change resulted from the ECRML’s ratification,54 and the issue of language rights and minority language recognition was taken up once more only following the conclusion of the St Andrews Agreement (SAA) in 2006. The SAA was the first instance of a pattern in Northern Ireland whereby an agreement on language rights provision is reached, driven by political breakdown, followed by a period during which the measures promised fail to be progressed, before language rights become the subject of renewed conflict, and further progress is made only when language rights are introduced as a ‘bargaining chip’ in inter-party political negotiations, generally following a fresh period of governmental breakdown.

The SAA followed the breakdown of the devolved government in 2002 and the imposition of direct rule, and sought to restore power-sharing to Northern Ireland. The UK government committed to working with the Stormont Executive to enhance and protect the development of both Irish and Ulster-Scots within the jurisdiction. In the same year as the SAA, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, a body created by the GFA, proposed that a Northern Ireland bill of rights should guarantee rights for all language users and make the extent of those rights dependent on the extent to which each language was used and understood in the community.55 However, the SAA undertaking to introduce an Irish Language Act overtook this proposal. [End Page 184] This was perhaps fortunate given the weak rights that any minority language in Northern Ireland would be afforded under a schema that relied on majority adoption to secure the most substantive rights.56

The hope that legislation would result from the SAA that would ultimately be similar to that already provided in Wales and Scotland was not actualised. While the British government initially undertook to introduce an Irish Language Act to enhance and protect the language and reiterated its belief in the need to enhance and develop not only the Ulster-Scots language but also Ulster-Scots ‘heritage and culture’,57 ultimately the SAA did not provide for a legislative commitment, and Section 28D of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and the St Andrews Agreement Act 2006 omitted any reference to an Irish Language Act, committing the Northern Ireland Executive instead to adopting ‘strategies’ for both Irish and Ulster-Scots.58

The Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure subsequently developed two separate strategies—a ‘Strategy to Enhance and Protect the Development of the Irish Language’59 and a ‘Strategy to Enhance and Develop the Ulster-Scots Language, Heritage and Culture’60—both of which were intended to cover the period 2015–35. However, neither was endorsed by the Executive or pressed into action. In 2015, the minister for culture, arts and leisure, Carál Ní Chuilín of Sinn Féin, began a public consultation on an Irish Language Bill61 and attempts were made to introduce such a bill in the Northern Ireland Assembly; however, the proposal failed to generate sufficient support.

The result was that no strategy or legislation as agreed under the SAA or otherwise was enacted and, in 2017, the Northern Irish High Court found the Executive62 to have breached its statutory duty under Section 28D of the [End Page 185] Northern Ireland Act 1998 to adopt such a strategy—in respect of Irish in particular. While the court noted that the obligation imposed by the section was not subject to a time limit, Maguire J noted that ‘a proper reading of the provision would necessarily imply into it the notion that the obligation is to be performed within a reasonable period of time’.63 Moving from the entry into force of the section following SAA, the court found that a ten-year period of inaction was not compliant with the obligation the section imposed.

International attention also shifted to the absence of language rights in Northern Ireland during this period, with concerns about the absence of legislation raised by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,64 the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities,65 and, perhaps most significantly given the UK’s ratification of and association with the language provisions of the GFA, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the ECRML.

The ECRML Committee, in particular, noted that the Northern Ireland Assembly had not reached a consensus on the adoption of an Irish Language Act and that ‘the adoption of such legislation as essential to free the promotion of Irish from political tensions’.66 However, the committee acknowledged that the promotion of Irish continued to be ‘highly politicised’, with government departments and local authorities in the jurisdiction adopting single-language policies that exclude the use of Irish, which is incompatible with the Charter.67 The committee also raised concerns regarding the absence of training for teachers in Irish, the relative paucity of Irish language media, the absence of legislative and geographic translations, and the failure to provide interpretation for Irish participation in the Stormont Assembly. It noted that the ongoing prohibition then in place on the use of Irish in court (under the Administration of Justice (Language) Act (Ireland) 1737) was discriminatory.68 In respect of Ulster-Scots, the committee noted that there remained a lack of [End Page 186] implementation in practice, with the language largely absent from, and at best inconsistently present in, public life.69

The UK was also admonished by the Committee of Experts working on the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (of which the UK had been a signatory since 1995) for failing to update it on the implementation of the Framework Convention in 2016, and, in particular, failing to provide any information on Northern Ireland.70 The committee noted that the latter failure had been explained as resulting from ‘the lack of agreement on minority and human-rights related issues between the two largest parties of the [Northern Ireland] Executive, particularly on the issue of the Irish language’, but nevertheless urged the Northern Ireland authorities to ‘at least provide information on non-controversial issues’ and called on the UK government to ‘help build consensus on the reporting process’.71 While the UK responded to this admonition by providing some information on Northern Ireland, it made no mention of either Irish or Ulster-Scots, including in the section of its response on ‘Languages’.72

Parallel to these developments, from 2017 until 2020, Northern Ireland remained without a functioning Executive, with the failure to reach an agreement to resume government at Stormont largely attributed to the inability among the parties involved to agree on an Irish Language Act or Cultures Act (as well as disagreement over the reform of the petition of concern mechanism and addressing the legacy of the Troubles). Sinn Féin, in particular, following Martin McGuinness’ resignation as leader amid controversy about the status of Irish, claimed that an Irish Language Act was necessary to fulfil the SAA.73 Other parties, notably the DUP, opposed the Act, arguing that sufficient funding was already provided to minority languages and that further legislation that provided for official recognition of Irish was unnecessary and [End Page 187] divisive. Following lengthy negotiations, in January 2020, the parties agreed to New Decade, New Approach (NDNA).

The NDNA commits the government to legislate to promote ‘parity of esteem, mutual respect, understanding and cooperation’ of different national and cultural identities in Northern Ireland, in particular through the creation of an Office of Identity and Cultural Expression, with responsibility for promoting cultural pluralism and respect for diversity, building social cohesion and reconciliation, and celebrating and supporting all aspects of Northern Ireland’s cultural and linguistic heritage. The NDNA also committed the Executive to the establishment of two language commissioners, one for Irish and one for Ulster-Scots, who would be charged with ensuring the enforcement of any legislative provisions, and with monitoring the extent to which the commitments made under the ECRML are given effect.

The Commissioner for Irish would be tasked with monitoring the use of Irish by public authorities and ensuring the ‘recognition, support, protection, and enhancement of the development of the Irish language’,74 while the Commissioner for Ulster-Scots would be tasked with enhancing and developing language, arts and literature associated with Ulster-Scots and the Ulster British tradition in Northern Ireland.75 The NDNA largely framed its proposed legislative provisions in response to the criticisms raised by the ECRML Committee of Experts, providing for enhanced translation and interpretation in government,76 increased use of minority languages in broadcasting,77 and permitting minority languages to be used for the registration of births, deaths, marriages and wills.78 The proposed legislation also undertook to facilitate the use of Irish in court ‘when deemed necessary’, thus allowing for the repeal of the Administration of Justice (Language) Act (Ireland) 1737, which was introduced in an attempt to remove Irish from the courtroom in the name of the ‘great mischiefs’ that languages other than English caused in matters of justice.79

As Ó Mainnín has pointed out, however, the NDNA does not address (or resolve) many of the issues that have been the subject of previous conflict over language rights and affect the daily lives of speakers, including the use [End Page 188] of Irish on signage.80 More significantly, the NDNA provided that any of the proposed changes must be agreed by the first and deputy first ministers— effectively creating a veto for the DUP. Two years after the NDNA was agreed, progress had been notably absent. An Act, a language strategy or a timetable for delivering either have not been forthcoming.81 By the time of writing the legislation promised under the NDNA had not been progressed despite statements from the secretary of state, Brandon Lewis, that if the Executive did not progress legislation by the end of September 2021, the UK government would take the legislation through parliament in Westminster.

The more fundamental issue is that the proposed changes may not go far enough, and will fail to keep pace with the needs of minority language communities in the jurisdiction and to capitalise on the potential of such legislation to act as a source of reconciliation. At present, the proposed legislative changes under the NDNA are limited to three amending Bills to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 that will make provisions to establish the Office of Identity and Cultural Expression, to make provisions for the Irish language, and to establish a commissioner to enhance and develop the language, arts and literature with the Ulster-Scots/Ulster British tradition in Northern Ireland.82 While these proposed changes represent welcome progress on the issue of language rights within the jurisdiction, the limited framework proposed is unlikely to foster a broader engagement with and use of minority languages beyond the communities in which such languages are already used.

LOOKING AHEAD: LANGUAGE RIGHTS AND RECONCILIATION

The pattern that emerges from an analysis of this development (or lack of development) on language rights in Northern Ireland is one of incremental (and largely rhetorical) progress achieved in extremis when incidences of political breakdown can be solved only by concessions by all parties on [End Page 189] matters that are considered too contentious for legislative resolution in other circumstances. And yet, there is increasing awareness within communities of all persuasions that linguistic and political identities are not mutually exclusive in the manner in which they have been portrayed by the political process. In East Belfast, the work of Turas, a language project ‘which aims to connect people from Protestant communities to their own history with the Irish language’, has become a significant force in reconciliation through language learning—offering fourteen classes a week, with almost 300 people registering to attend classes each year, the majority from the Protestant community.83 In 2021 the project opened a naíscoil (Irish language medium preschool),84 and it provides Irish language teaching for primary school students, as well as a library with over 4,000 resources in Irish and Ulster Scots and a scholarship scheme that currently supports eight people to attend university and study Irish. The project and its offerings, while open to any individual regardless of political or religious identity, has welcomed a large number of those from its surrounding communities in East Belfast to language learning, and is perhaps one of the most tangible illustrations of the false narrative presented as part of the political process that acquiring or using Irish is inherently corrosive of, or in conflict with, unionist or Protestant identities.

The success of Turas is particularly notable when set against the difficulties that McCoy has identified for Unionists who decide to learn Irish, which include abstract concerns about the need to articulate personally or socially how the language is compatible with their community identity and political views, alongside practical concerns about entering Catholic areas where language learning resources are located, and a fear of social stigmatisation or physical intimidation from their own community for doing so.85 In illustrating how language learning can be used as a means of reconciliation, Mitchell and Miller, in particular, have argued that Turas’ articulation of the place and importance of language within community has ‘invite[d] participants into a broader consideration of how polarized conflict narratives, transmitted through generations, have (mis)-shaped individuals’ and communities’ [End Page 190] understanding of their pasts’.86 Mitchell and Miller recorded the perception among community members interacting with Turas that their connection with the Irish language had been restored to them. Part of restoring this relationship focuses on the contextual presence of Irish across all communities in Northern Ireland through mapping the origins of place names, some 95 per cent of which derive from Irish logainmneacha,87 but which also have roots in Scots Gaelic and Norman languages, to re-expose the diversity and complexity of linguistic and community identities within Northern Ireland.

The tenor of the accounts gathered by Mitchell and Miller indicates the central premise on which many legislative provisions for language rights must seek to capitalise to further reconciliation, namely associating the provision of language rights with educational opportunities for all citizens rather than those who are already minority language users. In this respect, language rights legislation could actively seek, as in the case of Turas, to facilitate educational opportunities that support language users of all levels and from all communities to learn the minority language of their choosing, and in doing so to recover an aspect of their own community’s identity—and their own— that happens to seem to unite them with groups they may have traditionally understood as their opponents.

This, however, requires three fundamental changes to the manner in which languages legislation has traditionally operated—and to the models of legislation that have been proposed to date.88 The first change is an equal recognition and provision for Ulster-Scots, absent which, the legislation may both be perceived as being, and practically operate as, a tool for the furthering only of a recovery of Irish-speaking identities. This would represent a false picture of the nature of bilingualism and multilingualism in Northern Ireland, and could rightly be viewed as elevating the identarian and cultural concerns of certain kinds of bilingual speakers over others. In this respect, the aim of the legislation should not be to extinguish monolingual identities or promote particular forms of bilingualism but to make space for multiple and intersecting linguistic identities—an approach that Ross has found was most productive in community-building in other linguistic contexts.89 [End Page 191] Such an approach would be in keeping with the core objective of the GFA: that individuals within Northern Ireland would gradually relinquish strictly binary identities and embrace the complexity of identity and cultural tradition shared between Britain and Ireland as part of the right to be ‘British, Irish or both’.90 A correctly designed legal provision for language rights might also provide for a fourth identarian option by facilitating distinctively Northern Irish identities to emerge that are not British, Irish or both, and instead are allegiant to some combination of all—or none—of these categories.

The second, crucial, feature that languages legislation must contain to facilitate reconciliation is a recognition of, and a provision for, the differential needs of language users from various linguistic and community groups. Those who already use a minority language and live as part of a community that supports those users have different needs and resource requirements than those who have no, or basic, competence in a minority language and whose communities do not currently use, nor necessarily support the use of, minority languages. In this respect, Turas offers an insight into some of the differential needs of communities. Ensuring equality of linguistic identities may thus include the need to ensure the provision of:

  • • services and opportunities for language use and learning within one’s own community, whether rural or urban

  • • these services and opportunities in geographic and social settings where communities can mix in a neutral space, or within the language learner/user’s own community

  • • resources for those with different levels of language competence—from native speakers to those only beginning to learn—and for all ages of individual represented along that spectrum

  • • resources for families who wish to learn or use minority languages

  • • economic supports for those whose own resources are not sufficient to begin or to continue language learning

  • • cultural education alongside language learning, which highlights the shared histories and features of all languages used within Northern Ireland.

The needs of established language users and the communities in which they are represented may thus be significantly different from those of users who [End Page 192] belong to communities where minority languages are not (or are no longer) used. Addressing the needs of the former group involves focusing to a greater extent on rights that ensure speakers can interact with the state, secure recognition of their linguistic identity in official and institutional contexts and use their language in quotidian settings.

For minority language legislation to function in a democratic manner that offers something to all citizens, however, the needs and experiences of both established users and user communities, and new users and user communities, must be recognised. This leads to the third feature that language rights legislation must consider, namely the allocation of financial resources. Minority languages legislation—including in jurisdictions such as Ireland, where such languages have the highest, constitutional, standing—is frequently opposed on the basis that it represents a disproportionate allocation of limited financial resources, or is limited in its efficacy when the necessary resources for effecting legislative provisions are not provided. In this respect, both Cardinal91 and Ó Riagáin92 have emphasised the importance of the enforcement of language rights legislation to ensure compliance with and respect for language rights.

The two legislative features suggested above will necessarily involve the allocation of financial resources equal to, if not perhaps in excess of, those required by traditional language rights legislation. In this respect, successful legislative models require not only black-letter legal change but also a reorientation of how language rights, and the purpose of such rights, are articulated and perceived. Muller has argued that language rights legislation should be understood as compensatory action in recognition of state damage to language and should be accompanied by genuine equality, and partnership in governance.93 Such approaches in Northern Ireland, however, would hardly be conducive to depoliticising language or using language rights as a tool for reconciliation. Indeed, Cardinal and others have acknowledged that legislation can be a blunt instrument, better adapted to the needs of government than to the sensitive process of language revitalisation.94 In this respect, [End Page 193] a deliberative democracy-led approach to language rights legislation is likely the most sustainable approach. Current proposals for language rights legislation, however, have been developed largely without significant public participation or consultation. This is particularly problematic given the unsettled perceptions of language rights generally within the jurisdiction, and the concern about the objectives of such legislation in elevating the interests of certain language users over others.

The long-term goal of those advocating for language rights should be to ensure that legislation not only would contribute to the normalisation of the minority languages involved but also, in Northern Ireland, would depoliticise language and allow minority languages protection to become part of a broader pattern of reconciliation.95 These objectives are challenging to secure in circumstances where the legislation that is proposed (or passed) has been developed in a highly politicised context (linked to the resumption of government) and has been negotiated and agreed without the kind of ongoing public consultation that would generate a context in which concerns of non-users and a diverse range of users were addressed as part of the drafting process.

The role of deliberative democracy in such settings is to respond to ‘the persistence of moral disagreement’—or conflicts about fundamental values— through the political process.96 This, along with the contextual framing of Northern Irish politics, which is fundamentally concerned with resolving disagreement around value-based community identities, makes deliberative democratic change particularly important. Change accomplished through such a model affirms the need to justify decisions made by citizens and their representatives and the obligations they impose on one another in seeking to locate equality of compromise that neither side can reasonably reject.97 In Northern Ireland, where language rights have been politicised, a deliberative democratic model for language rights legislation would elevate the quotidian attitudes of individuals to the minority languages present in their communities while seeking to minimise the manipulation of minority languages as part of a political narrative rather than a lived one.

This may seem somewhat utopian, yet Williams has demonstrated the need for, and importance of, participative legislative development in divided societies where citizen participation and regulatory scrutiny can be equally [End Page 194] important in attempting to orient legislative change toward achieving an integrated process of reconciliation through the provision of language rights.98 McMonagle has argued that, in this context, the inbuilt reciprocity of deliberative democracy, which demands equal recognition of majority and minority positions, is crucial to political stability following violent conflict.99 Williams ventures that, moving from a position where basic commitments to language rights are present, ‘the next logical step in the promotion and regulation of language policy should be a serious attempt to involve all the stakeholders in the broader discussion surrounding governance’.100 A crucial first step in ensuring this is, however, to secure the involvement of all communities in the process of legislative development, and to guard against the involvement of only established communities of language users.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL F UTURE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE ON A SHARED ISLAND

Thinking about how the perception of minority languages and language rights can be reoriented and depoliticised in Northern Ireland is a significant part of seeking to ensure the survival of minority languages on their own merits. It is also, however, a crucial aspect of building a certain minimum agreement around one of the basic cultural issues that must be considered in the context of potential constitutional change on the island.

At present, the Irish constitution makes explicit provision for Irish as the ‘national language’ and the ‘first official language’ of Ireland in Article 8. English is recognised, in Article 8.2, as a ‘second official language’ of the state. Irish is thus afforded the premier constitutional place, and is the sole ‘national’ language.101 Provision is made in Article 8.3, however, for the exclusive use of either Irish or English for any official purposes throughout the state, or in parts of it. [End Page 195]

The objective of Article 8 (and its predecessor, Article 4 of the Free State constitution102) was arguably to assure the highest level of protection for a minority language that continued to decline even after independence. However, while the provision has succeeded in securing a certain minimum commitment to the Irish language, it has more often been invoked in the context of the deference afforded to the state under Article 8.3 than in defence of a right to a life lived through Irish.103 Regardless of whether the provision can be considered an effective protector of the Irish language and of its speakers, its retention has been generally viewed as a fundamental safeguard against the erosion of language rights within the jurisdiction.

In the context of constitutional change on the island of Ireland, this ordering presents two immediately apparent issues. The first is the deliberate creation of a linguistic hierarchy (in both symbolic and legal terms) that sees Irish as the exclusive national language, thus linking it to ideas of citizenship and belonging, and sees English as an additional official language but one unrelated to, or less connected with, a national identity. This ordering is, in some respects, a deliberate invocation of the feared hierarchy of identity and language voiced by the Reverend Mervyn Gibson, specifically enshrining an ideal of national identity as Irish speaking (whether in aspiration or in practice).

The present linguistic constitutional ordering would thus be untenable in the context of constitutional change driven by the need to accommodate reunification. Even where the popular perception and practical use of Irish in Northern Ireland altered significantly, the elevation of Irish as the constitutionally ‘first’ and exclusive ‘national’ language, and the exclusion of Ulster-Scots, would both pose significant threats to cross-community support for any new constitution. This is particularly the case given the consent-based models of constitutional change that currently characterise the legal structures for potential unification.

The second issue is that the present constitutional position of Irish in the Republic of Ireland effectively creates the logically dubious effect that the Irish language cannot be considered a ‘minority’ language because of its constitutional recognition as the first official and national language. The irony of this position is that the language is constitutionally protected, but is not subject to the extensive regulation through legislation to which languages [End Page 196] that are not constitutionally protected, but are subject to the protections of the ECRML, are subject.

The question in such circumstances is what form language rights could take within the constitution of a united Ireland, and how constitutional provision could be made in a manner that neither created hierarchies of linguistic rights or linguistically determined belonging that favoured a majority language nor imposed a requirement to engage with a particular minority language on all linguistic communities. The significant challenge in this respect is structuring a provision for language rights that does not perpetuate ideas of Protestant, unionist English and Ulster-Scots speakers and Catholic, nationalist Irish, or Irish and English, speakers, but rather promotes a conception of plurilingual citizenship. This may be accommodated through the equal recognition of all three languages as part of the culture and history of the island of Ireland, affording them all status as official and national languages but elevating none to the position of ‘first language’. However, to ensure that such provision was not, in practice, instituted in a manner that favoured one language, a provision similar to that currently included in Article 8.3 would likely need to be excluded and replaced with a presumption that provision will be made by the state in all three languages absent a necessary basis provided by law.

Securing sufficient public support for a constitutional provision of this type, however, requires a shift in public perception of minority language use and minority language users—and a dissociation, or perhaps recomplication, of linguistic and political identities. In the short term, a new model of language rights legislation (as tentatively outlined above) can assist in this, by fostering greater linguistic plurality, and intersection, between communities. The more complicated issue in respect of language rights in a newly united Ireland is, perhaps counterintuitively, more likely to rest in legislative than in constitutional change. Provision for public services through minority languages, quotients of competent speakers in public-facing positions and services, signage and communications, as well as financial supports and social services for minority language communities have already proved contentious not only in Northern Ireland, as this article has detailed, but also in the Republic of Ireland, where the legislative and policy commitments and practical provision for the rights of Irish speakers [End Page 197] have rarely attracted the kind of broad support that the place of Irish as the national and first official language would suggest on a prima facie basis.104

The more difficult issue, in terms of linguistic recognition, at both a conceptual and a practical level, in the context of a united Ireland would be the status of Irish as an official language of the European Union—and the absence of a similar status for Ulster Scots. While Irish was a Treaty language from Ireland’s accession to the Union in 1973, in 2007 it became an official and working language of the EU.105 The result is that all legislation enacted must now be translated into Irish. The most obvious step to be taken in the context of unification would be to seek official status for Ulster-Scots and, as was done with Irish, if official status was granted, to seek a derogation to enable institutional translation capacity to be accumulated to support the recognition.106

Building out equal institutional capacities in Irish and Ulster-Scots to effect language rights in practice would thus require not only EU and constitutional change but a contentious process of legislative drafting, and a long-term commitment to educating portions of the population to provide public services to a high standard in all three languages of the jurisdiction. This would necessarily require, as one aspect of its development, an educational model that departed from the one currently employed in the Republic of Ireland (namely compulsory Irish education and examination through to university) and would likely require active government incentivisation for engagement with any minority language rather than mandatory individual requirements. The challenge for a united Ireland from a language rights perspective is thus not only constitutional or legislative, but also based in practical, community-situated needs for ensuring linguistic attainment, securing venues for language use and ensuring that linguistic communities do not become isolated or mutually exclusive in political, socio-economic or geographic terms. [End Page 198]

CONCLUSION

Dunbar has noted that the enactment of appropriate legislation can be among the most effective catalysts in changing public attitudes and impacting the policy and practice of minority language treatment and use.107 McLeod has similarly noted that language rights legislation, by removing the topic of language rights from the everyday political arena, can prevent such rights and the languages to which they attach from continuing as the subject of politicisation and bargaining.108 This is not to say that the process of legislative drafting and passage is not in itself deeply politicising (as developments in Northern Ireland to date have demonstrated), but it does demonstrate that by reorienting language rights as part of the status quo, it may be possible to begin a process of separating political ideology from linguistic identity.

The suggestions made in this article for framing language rights legislation in Northern Ireland in order for these rights to function as part of a broader reconciliatory landscape (as existing efforts like Turas have functioned) are not uncontroversial. Indeed, they are like to be both practically and politically challenging to enact given the Executive’s history of successive failures to agree far more neutral and less radical language rights provisions. Even in Ireland, where Irish is constitutionally recognised as the first official language, debates about resourcing language rights—which this author considers to be a crucial aspect of Turas’ success and of a reconciliation-based model of language rights—remain divisive. Yet the existing model of language rights legislation in Ireland as well as in the United Kingdom (which certain civil society actors within Northern Ireland have adopted in their own legislative recommendations) is poorly equipped to allow Northern Ireland’s politicians and citizens to move beyond the currently dominant perceptions of the country’s minority languages as belonging to particular political and religious communities who already use them.

Without shifting this perception, language rights will remain a source of political divisiveness, support for which is predicated on political affiliation. In that context, even were an Act to be passed as promised, there would be [End Page 199] insufficient cross-community support to prevent subsequent amendments, failures to commence, or revocations of the legislative provisions—or to call for it to be strengthened or more effectively enforced. Sustainable legislative change that recognises the rights of minority language users must thus begin from a position that the recognition of minority language rights is an inherently political act that is susceptible to being further politicised for divisive purposes, and orient its content to garner the public, cross-community support that can begin to counter that potential. [End Page 200]

Róisín Á. Costello
Dublin City University

Author’s email: roisin.ainecostello@dcu.ie; ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6368-9691. This article is part of an IRC-funded project under the New Foundations scheme.

Footnotes

1. Reverend Jim Stothers, quoted in Andy Pollak, ‘Could the Irish language be a tool for reconciliation in Northern Ireland?’, available at: https://2irelands2gether.com/2020/05/01/could-the-irish-language-be-a-tool-for-reconciliation-in-northern-ireland/ (30 November 2021).

2. Janet Egleson Dunleavy and Gareth W. Dunleavy, Douglas Hyde: a maker of modern Ireland (Berkeley, 1991), 1.

3. Gerry Moriarty, ‘North talks collapse over Irish language’, Irish Times, 14 February 2018.

4. See, for example, Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Hidden Ulster: Protestants and the Irish language (Belfast, 1995); Roger Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish language (Belfast, 2020); Ian Malcolm, Towards inclusion: Protestants and the Irish language (Newtownards, 2010).

5. See John Doyle, Cathy Gormley-Heenan and Patrick Griffin, ‘Editorial: Introducing ARINS—Analysing and Researching Ireland, North and South’, Irish Studies in International Affairs 32 (2) (2021), vii–xvii.

6. Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), ‘Results of Census 2011’, available at: https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/2011-census/results (29 November 2021); NISRA, ‘Northern Ireland Census 2011 Key Statistics Summary Report’ (2014), available at: http://www.nisra.gov.uk/archive/census/2011/results/key-statistics/summary-report.pdf (29 November 2021).

7. Nicholas M. Wolf, An Irish speaking island: state, religion, community and the linguistic landscape in Ireland 1770–1870 (Madison, 2014).

8. Nicholas Williams, ‘Language’, in S.J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford companion to Irish history (Oxford, 2002), 315–16.

9. Williams, ‘Language’.

10. Niall Ó Ciosáin, ‘Gaelic culture and language shift’, in Laurence M. Geary and Margaret Kelleher (eds), Nineteenth century Ireland: a guide to recent research (Dublin, 2005); Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, I mbéal an bháis: the Great Famine and the language shift in nineteenth century Ireland (Hamden, CT, 2015); Wolf, An Irish speaking island.

11. Verona Ní Drisceoil, ‘Antipathy, paradox and disconnect in the Irish state’s legal relationship with the Irish language’, Irish Jurist 55 (2016), 45–74.

12. On the Irish revival movement during the 1960s see Aodán Mac Póilín, ‘Aspects of the Irish language movement in Northern Ireland’, in Aodán Mac Póilín (ed.), The Irish language in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1997); Camille C. O’Reilly, The Irish language in Northern Ireland: the politics of culture and identity (Basingstoke, 1999), 20.

13. Mac Póilín, ‘Aspects of the Irish language movement in Northern Ireland’; O’Reilly, The Irish language in Northern Ireland, 20. See broadly Philip McDermott, ‘From ridicule to legitimacy? “Contested languages” and devolved language planning’, Current Issues in Language Planning 20 (2019), 121–39.

14. On the debate, and the complexity of the identities associated with Ulster-Scots, see Peter Robert Gardner, ‘Unionism, loyalism, and the Ulster-Scots ethnolinguistic “revival”’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 15 (2015), 4–25.

15. Mícheál B. Ó Mainnín, ‘Empowering multilingualism? Provisions for place names in Northern Ireland and the political and legislative context’, in Deirdre A. Dunlevy and Robert Blackwood (eds), Multilingualism in public spaces: empowering and transforming communities (London, 2021), 60–1.

16. Mac Póilín, ‘Aspects of the Irish language movement in Northern Ireland’.

17. Bharain Macan Bhreithiún and Anne Burke, ‘Language, typography and place-making: walking the Irish and Ulster-Scots linguistic landscape’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 38 (2014), 84–125.

18. Aodán Mac Póilín, ‘Plus ça change: the Irish language and politics’, in Mac Póilín, The Irish language in Northern Ireland; on historically politicised treatment see O’Reilly, The Irish language in Northern Ireland; Camille O’Reilly, ‘Nationalists and the Irish language in Northern Ireland: competing perspectives’, in Mac Póilín, The Irish language in Northern Ireland.

19. Tony Crowley, ‘Language, politics and identity in Ireland: a historical overview’, in Ray Hickey (ed.), Sociolinguistics in Ireland (Basingstoke, 2016).

20. Mac Póilín, ‘Plus ça change’, 24 and 39.

21. Mac Póilín, ‘Plus ça change’, 44.

22. Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, ‘A question of national identity or minority rights? The changing status of the Irish language in Ireland since 1922’, Nations and Nationalism 18 (3) (2012), 398–416; Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh, Language, resistance and revival: republican prisoners and the Irish language in the North of Ireland (London, 2013); Dónall Ó Baoill, ‘Origins of Irish-medium education: the dynamic core of language revitalisation in Northern Ireland’, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10 (4) (2007), 410–27.

23. David Mitchell and Megan Miller, ‘Reconciliation through language learning? A case study of the Turas Irish language project in East Belfast’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (2) (2019), 235–53.

24. DUP manifesto (2001), available at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/dup/dup01.pdf (29 November 2021), 13.

25. Deirdre A. Dunlevy, ‘Learning Irish amid controversy: how the Irish Language Act debate has impacted learners of Irish in Belfast’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1854272.

26. ‘Curry my yogurt: Gregory Campbell, DUP, barred from speaking for day’, BBC News, 4 November 2014.

27. Éanna Ó Caollaí, ‘Explainer: Breaking the deadlock over an Irish Language Act’, Irish Times, 9 January 2020.

28. Claire Williamson, ‘Ulster-Scots police advert: could you be the next Heid Offyser furtae jyne tha PSNI?’, Belfast Telegraph, 4 April 2014.

29. McDermott, ‘From ridicule to legitimacy?’.

30. See K. Stapleton and J. Wilson, ‘Ulster Scots identity and culture: the missing voices’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11 (2004), 563–91: 563.

31. M. Nic Craith, ‘Irish speakers in Northern Ireland, and the Good Friday Agreement’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 20 (1999), 494–507; McDermott, ‘From ridicule to legitimacy?’.

32. See, on the politics of language in Northern Ireland, Brian Ó Conchubhair, ‘Politics of language in a (Dis) United Ireland’, Irish Studies in International Affairs 33 (2) (2022), 30–67.

33. Rosalind Pritchard, ‘Protestants and the Irish language: historical heritage and current attitudes in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25 (2004), 62–82.

34. Ó Mainnín, ‘Empowering multilingualism?’, 59.

35. See Ó Snodaigh, Hidden Ulster; Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish Language, in particular 212 et seq.; Malcolm, Towards inclusion.

36. Ó Snodaigh, Hidden Ulster; Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish Language, in particular 212 et seq.; Malcolm, Towards inclusion.

37. On the role of institutional recognition in identity formation for linguistic minorities, see Jeroen Darquennes, ‘Language conflict research: a state of the art’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 235 (2015), 7–32: 16.

38. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic groups in conflict (Berkeley, 2000), 219–24. On this theme in a Northern Irish context see Mitchell and Miller, ‘Reconciliation through language learning?’.

39. Joshua A. Fishman, Language and nationalism: two integrative essays (New York, 1973), 266.

40. See generally Fishman, Language and nationalism; Fernand de Varennes, Language, minorities and human rights (Leiden, 1996).

41. Meital Pinto, ‘Taking language rights seriously’, King’s Law Journal 25 (2014), 231–54; Ben Ó Ceallaigh, ‘Neoliberal globalisation and language minoritisation: lessons from Ireland 2008–2018’, Language and Communication 75 (2020), 103–16.

42. Janet Muller, Language and conflict in Northern Ireland and Canada (Basingstoke, 2010), 8–9.

43. Christopher McGimpsey, ‘Untitled’, in Pilib Mistéil (ed), The Irish language and the unionist tradition (Belfast, 1994), 9.

44. Liam S. Andrews, ‘The very dogs in Belfast will bark in Irish’, in Mac Poilín, The Irish language in Northern Ireland, 82.

45. See generally Andrews, ‘The very dogs in Belfast will bark in Irish’.

46. In 1984, Breandán Ó Fiaich, an Irish teacher, was arrested and subsequently fined for refusing to speak English when stopped by the RUC at a checkpoint and later defending himself in court through Irish. See ‘Fined for Speaking Irish’, RTÉ Archive (1984), available at: https://www.rte.ie/archives/2019/0613/1055193-irish-language-teacher-fined/ (6 December 2021).

47. Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, 1998, ‘Strand Three: Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity — Economic, Social and Cultural Issues’ [3].

48. Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, 1998, ‘Strand Three’ [4]. See also Nic Craith, ‘Irish speakers in Northern Ireland, and the Good Friday Agreement’.

49. McDermott, ‘From ridicule to legitimacy?’; Cathy Gormley-Heenan and Derek Birrell, Multi-level governance and Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, 2015), 118.

50. Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, 1998, Strand Three (part 2).

51. Northern Ireland Act 1998, available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/47/contents (30 November 2021), paragraph 30.

52. ‘Joint Declaration by the British and Irish Governments 2003’, available at: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20040705075218/ and http://www.nio.gov.uk/pdf/joint2003.pdf (30 November 2021).

53. See generally Dunlevy, ‘Learning Irish amid controversy’.

54. See generally Dónall Ó Riagáin, ‘An Chairt Eorpach: uirlis sholúbtha le cur chun cinn teangach’, in Dónall Ó Riagáin (ed.), Language and law in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 2003); Niamh Nic Suibhne, ‘European Community law and minority languages’, in Ó’Riagáin, Language and law in Northern Ireland.

56. A similar desire for language rights based on proportionate use of a language within the population was voiced in 2017 by then DUP party leader Arlene Foster, who argued that it was more desirable and practical to have a Polish Language Act because more people in Northern Ireland speak Polish than Irish. See ‘Arlene Foster on Irish language act: “More people speak Polish”’, Belfast Telegraph, 6 February 2017. This is a tidy obfuscation, reducing minority language speakers to an unreasonable minority while refusing to acknowledge that the reason the place of such languages must be seriously considered is the colonial legacy of the UK and its institutionally and legally enshrined linguistic mandate.

57. Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, ‘Strategy to Enhance and Develop the Ulster-Scots Language, Heritage and Culture 2015–2035: one year on’ (Belfast, 2016).

58. Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, ‘The Irish Language Strategy: one year on’ (Belfast, 2016).

59. Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, ‘The Irish Language Strategy: one year on’.

60. Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, ‘Strategy to Enhance and Develop the Ulster-Scots Language, Heritage and Culture 2015–2035: one year on’.

61. Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, ‘Proposals for an Irish Language Bill (February 2015)’.

62. In re Section 28D of The Northern Ireland Act 1998 [2017] NIQB 27 (Maguire J)

63. In re Section 28D of The Northern Ireland Act 1998 [2017] NIQB 27 (Maguire J) [5].

64. United Nations Economic and Social Council, ‘Concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (2016)’, [67].

65. Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, ‘Fourth Opinion on the United Kingdom’ (25 May 2016).

66. Committee of Ministers, ‘10.6 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Fifth report of the Committee of Experts in respect of the United Kingdom’ (2020).

67. Committee of Ministers, ‘10.6 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Fifth report of the Committee of Experts in respect of the United Kingdom’ (2020) [13].

68. Committee of Ministers, ‘10.6 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Fifth report of the Committee of Experts in respect of the United Kingdom’ (2020).

69. Committee of Ministers, ‘10.6 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Fifth report of the Committee of Experts in respect of the United Kingdom’ (2020) [15].

70. Fourth Report Submitted by the United Kingdom Pursuant to Article 25, Paragraph 2 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (2015).

71. Fourth Opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (2015) [3].

72. Comments of the government of the United Kingdom on the Fourth Opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Implementation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities by the United Kingdom (2017).

73. See Carál Ní Chuilín, ‘Sinn Féin committed to securing Irish Language Act’, 21 February 2017, available at: https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/43585 (2 February 2022).

74. NDNA, 16.

75. NDNA.

76. NDNA, 16.

77. NDNA, 16, 49, 61.

78. NDNA, 34.

79. NDNA, 34.

80. Ó Mainnín, ‘Empowering multilingualism?’; Sarah McMonagle, ‘Deliberating the Irish language in Northern Ireland: from conflict to multiculturalism?’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 31 (2010), 253–70; Abhimanyu Sharma, ‘Whither the Irish Language Act? Language policies in Northern Ireland’, Current Issues in Language Planning 22 (2021), 308–27.

81. In April 2021 Conradh na Gaeilge issued a pre-action protocol letter to the Northern Irish Executive indicating that the group intended to take legal action over the Executive’s failure to implement an Irish language strategy as directed by the High Court’s 2017 judgment. See https://www.cnag.ie/en/news/1450-01042021.html (1 December 2021).

82. See NDNA, 36.

83. https://www.ebm.org.uk/turas/. See also Linda Ervine, ‘Northern Protestants like me are embracing the Irish language’, Irish Independent, 4 September 2021.

84. Claire Simpson, ‘Linda Ervine on how an Irish medium pre-school in east Belfast found a home after a campaign of intimidation’, Irish News, 25 October 2021.

85. Gordon McCoy, ‘Protestant learners of the Irish language movement’, in Mac Póilín, The Irish language in Northern Ireland.

86. Mitchell and Miller, ‘Reconciliation through language learning?’.

87. Mitchell and Miller, ‘Reconciliation through language learning?’. On multilingualism and place names see also Ó Mainnín, ‘Empowering multilingualism?’.

88. For comparison see the Republic of Ireland’s Official Languages Act 2003; Welsh Language Act 1993 and Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011; Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005.

89. Marc Howard Ross, Cultural contestation in ethnic conflict (Cambridge, 2007), 319–20.

90. Good Friday/Belfast Agreement 1998 (vi), Annex A.

91. Quoted in Muller, Language and conflict in Northern Ireland and Canada, 9–10.

92. See Pádraig Ó Riagáin, Language policy and social reproduction: Ireland 1893–1993 (Oxford, 1997).

93. Muller, Language and conflict in Northern Ireland and Canada, 10–11.

94. See Robert Dunbar, ‘Is there a duty to legislate for lingustic minorities?’, Journal of Law and Society 33 (2006) 181–98; Wilson McLeod, ‘Securing the status of Gaelic? Implementing the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005’, Scottish Affairs 57 (2006), 19–38; de Varennes, Language, minorities and human rights; Mac Giolla Chríost, ‘A question of national identity or minority rights?’.

95. Dunlevy, ‘Learning Irish amid controversy’.

96. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and disagreement (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 1051.

97. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why deliberative democracy? (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 3.

98. C.H. Williams, Linguistic minorities in democratic context (Basingstoke, 2008), 4; McMonagle, ‘Deliberating the Irish language in Northern Ireland’.

99. McMonagle, ‘Deliberating the Irish language in Northern Ireland’, 253.

100. Williams, Linguistic minorities in democratic context, 6.

101. In addition, Article 25.4.4° requires that all Acts of the Oireachtas passed in one of the official languages shall be issued in the other official language.

102. Though in Ó Murchú v. Registrar of Companies [1980–1998] TÉ 112, 115 O’Hanlon J noted that the provisions of Article 8 are stronger in the recognition afforded under Article 4.

103. Niamh Nic Shuibhne, ‘State duty and the Irish language’, Dublin University Law Journal 19 (1997), 32–49.

104. Ní Drisceoil, ‘Antipathy, paradox and disconnect in the Irish state’s legal relationship with the Irish language’.

105. A derogation that allowed a delay of the entry into force of translation requirements ended on 1 January 2022.

106. On the institutional capacities that are needed to support recognition, see European Commission, ‘Report from the Commission to the Council on whether the Union institutions have sufficient available capacity for the Irish language, relative to the other official EU languages to apply Regulation No.1 without a derogation as of 1 January 2022’, COM(2021) 315 final.

107. Robert Dunbar, ‘Gaelic in Scotland: the legal and institutional framework’, in William McLeod (ed.), Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Dunbar, ‘Is there a duty to legislate for lingustic minorities?’; Robert Dunbar, ‘Language legislation and language rights in the United Kingdom’, European yearbook of minority issues (Leiden, 2004), 95.

108. Wilson McLeod, ‘Gaelic in contemporary Scotland: challenges, strategies and contradictions’, Europa Ethnica 71 (2014), 3–12; McLeod, ‘Securing the status of Gaelic?’.

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