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Once more politics in Northern Ireland is mired in stalemate. So much has again got lost in translation. It goes far deeper than a mere dispute about statutory support for the Irish language.
The divergence in political cultures, which were papered over by the powersharing Executives, has again been exposed.
Those of us looking on from this side of the Border are bewildered as to how demands for an Irish language Act and unionist misconceptions about what that might involve have collapsed talks about establishing the Stormont Executive.
We scratch our heads wondering how at a time when Northern Ireland so badly needs a government – and a governmental voice in Brexit negotiations – that policy about the Irish language of all things has become the stumbling block to a new deal.
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I got some insight to unionist attitudes to the Irish language and their resistance to giving it statutory recognition during an event involving the Democratic Unionist MP Ian Paisley at the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Co Wexford, last September.
In the middle of a wide-ranging interview I pointed out to Paisley how to most people in the Republic the Irish language was core to our identity even for those of us whose use of it is limited.
I asked Paisley how he thought hearing DUP politicians like Gregory Campbell saying things like "curry my yogurt can Coca Cola yer" when mocking Sinn Féin speakers using Irish in Stormont makes us supporters of the language in the Republic feel.
Paisley said: “I think it probably makes you sick to the core.”
His follow-on answer was interesting. I asked him if he would criticise Campbell for what he had said, and Paisley said they “had had conversations”. I pressed him on what his exchanges with Campbell on the point were, but he declined to reveal the details of a private conversation with a colleague.
Expression of fear
Paisley went on, however, to say that while he did not seek to defend what Campbell had said he wished to explain it. He did so in terms which were revealing, at least to a Wexford audience, about how the Irish language currently plays out as a political issue on the unionist side in Northern Ireland.
“I know why he says it,” said Paisley. “I believe probably it is an expression of fear that is represented to us as unionists by our constituents.”
The space for cultural understanding has shrunk rather than expanded in the last six months
Paisley argued that while the Irish language in the Republic was “treated with the respect and dignity and cultural assertiveness that it should be entitled to”, in Northern Ireland “unfortunately the Irish language has been used as a weapon politically against and almost to insult Protestants, and that has had push-back”.
I put it to him that it seemed the DUP had at times fallen into a political trap set by Sinn Féin. The later had tried to utilise the Irish language and such issues as political tit-for-tat, and had successfully provoked unionist politicians into insensitive remarks like Arlene Foster’s comment that conceding on recognition for the Irish language would be like feeding a crocodile which would only come back for more.
Paisley didn’t disagree, pointing out that in addition to listening to their own communities unionist politicians had to lead, and that he felt that at times he didn’t think “our leadership has taken our country a particularly strong way”, and that things could be done differently.
He argued then that politicians needed to create enough space for mutual respect and understanding on cultural and other issues.
Media moments
One gets the sense, however, that the space for such understanding has shrunk rather than expanded in the last six months. Two media moments this week highlighted how politically insane the impasse over the language issue has now got in Northern Irish politics.
One came on Tuesday when Foster felt it necessary to tell the BBC political editor Mark Davenport that the legislation, which it then looked like she might sign up to, would not be as wide-ranging as some in the unionist community had speculated.
“There won’t be anyone forced to learn Irish” she said, “There won’t be quotas for Irish speakers in the civil service, and their won’t be bilingual directional signage.”
The other moment was during a Sinn Féin press conference at Stormont on Wednesday when a TG4 reporter asked a question in Irish.
A look somewhere between bewilderment and terror fell over the faces of both Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O'Neill, neither of whom appeared able to reply to the question, which fell instead to be answered in Irish by Sinn Féin chairman Declan Kearney.
The former clip illustrates the level of misunderstanding about and “push-back” against an Irish language Act among unionism.
The latter illustrates how for the Sinn Féin leadership this is about a political win rather than being grounded in any personal commitment to the language itself.