Member's statement: Place-Name Project
Member's statement by Mr Colm Gildernew on .
- MLA
- Mr Colm Gildernew
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 5 May 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Place-Name Project
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5524344
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I will raise the issue of the collapse of the Place-Name Project on the watch of the Minister for Communities. Continued funding of £90,000 per annum for that project would mean only a fraction of the funding that the Minister has announced for his pet projects. He is a Minister who can spend over £700,000 on musical instruments for marching bands; a further £100,000 to cover bands' travel expenses; £425,000 on American independence celebrations; and £40,000 on Belfast Orangefest
Shamefully, the Members opposite cheer those partisan funding allocations.
Instead of promoting the Irish language, the Minister has embroiled himself in multiple court cases on Irish language signage in Grand Central station and in the Belfast City Council area, which recently failed. He has removed Irish language logos from his Department's branding, blocked increased funding for the Irish language, failed to bring forward an Irish language strategy and failed to support the key Place-Name Project. The Minister has tried again today to claim that it is not his responsibility, and, once again, he has failed. The fact that it is his responsibility is evidenced not only by his letter to me in April but by a letter from his Department in 2022 accepting that he is responsible for funding it. The Minister's strategy is not to promote or to develop the Irish language. Instead, he seeks to suppress it and to make it invisible. He will also fail in that.
239 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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