A Belfast City Council committee has approved bilingual Irish/English signage for south Belfast’s Olympia Leisure Centre after years of delays.
The long delayed plan to erect Irish signs at the council-owned leisure centre in a largely unionist-voting part of the city reached its endgame on Friday morning, at the council’s strategic policy and resources (SPR) committee.
On a vote, 15 councillors voted in favour of Irish signage at Olympia, from Sinn Féin, Alliance, the SDLP and the Greens, while five DUP councillors voted against.
A consultation report showed that in the wider Belfast area, over 80% of respondents said they would be happy to see bilingual signage at the leisure centre, with 79% specifically in favour of Irish being used.
The decision will go to the full council meeting next month for ratification.
If the vote at the SPR committee is reproduced by the same parties it will pass at full council.
The leisure centre, off Boucher Road in south Belfast, is beside Windsor Park, the home ground for Linfield Football Club and the Northern Ireland national team, and is close to Tate’s Avenue, beside the loyalist Village area.
It has been five years since the original consultation was proposed into the erection of bilingual directional signage at the council’s four city-wide leisure centres at Andersonstown, Olympia, Lisnasharragh and Templemore.
Since then the erection of signage at Olympia has been hit by various delays.
At the committee meeting on Friday, City Solicitor Nora Largey said the consultation report established there were “two very stark views” in terms of the erection of signage at Olympia Leisure Centre.
Those in favour of bilingual signage quoted international obligations, while some local residents “and others” felt it would cause alienation, and that it would damage community relations.
DUP councillor Bradley Ferguson said a “sensible approach” would be to do something similar to Translink at the new Grand Central Station in Belfast.
“They have a welcome sign inside their new building which welcomes everybody in all languages,” he said.
However, Mr Ferguson then took aim at the Alliance Party.
“The Alliance Party come across as the great fence-sitters, and tell us how they represent everybody, and when it comes to decisions like this, they turn around, flick the two fingers at unionism and say get stuffed,” he stated.
Alliance councillor Michael Long said the statement was “offensive language” and asked for it to be retracted, which was done so by Mr Ferguson.
The DUP’s Fred Cobain said Irish language signage at the Olympia is one of the most “divisive issues we have had in council in a long time”.
“For areas we represent people do have a genuine view that they don’t want Irish language street signs for instance,” he said.
“And I think it is entirely wrong that people who have that view are demonised as some sort of idiots.
“These people have a genuine view around this particular issue.”
He said people who objected to Irish language signs were “seen as some sort of bigot”.
Mr Long again raised a point of order, stating: “To say that anybody has described anything as being to do with bigotry is totally false.”
SDLP councillor Séamas de Faoite said the debate “has a risk of damaging good relations, and is sending out a very difficult message out to the rest of the city if we hear more of the contributions we have heard”.