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<h2>Derry’s council delay decision on possible removal of Ulster Scots</h2>
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13:15 Friday 13th of April 2018
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<p>By Alan Healy<br>
Deputy Editor </p>
<p>THE rights of people who use Ulster Scots would not be impacted if
Derry’s council decided to remove it from all its signing and branding,
it has emerged.</p>
<p>The information came to light earlier this week during a discussion
on the future of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s existing
language policies in respect of Irish and Ulster-Scots.</p>
<p>A report was brought before Tuesday’s meeting of the council’s
Governance and Strategic Planning Committee, where councillors were
presented with three options on future policies.</p>
<p>Speaking at the meeting, Ellen Cavanagh, Lead Democratic Services and
Improvement Officer with the council, said that the council introduced
policies for Irish and Ulster-Scots in April 2015, which set out a range
of commitments to promote Irish and Ulster-Scots in public life.</p>
<p>She added that Derry City and Strabane District Council is the only
one of eleven in the North which has a trilingual policy in respect of
corporate branding and signage, meaning that it features English, Irish
and Ulster-Scots.</p>
<p>In January 2017, the council passed a resolution to ‘initiate a
comprehensive policy review on language usage including corporate
branding and signage’.</p>
<p>A cross-party Working Group was then established made up of Sinn
Fein’s Maolíosa McHugh, the SDLP’s John Boyle DUP councillor David
Ramsey, the UUP’s Derek Hussey and the independent councillor Gary
Donnelly.</p>
<p>Three options were then presented at the meeting, the first being
that council retain its existing policy which would see the council’s
corporate brand remaining trilingual (English, Irish and Ulster-Scots)
and that the signage contains trilingual logo, trilingual welcome and
trilingual heading.</p>
<p>Option 1 would also see the main body of text in English only in the likes of Public Notices.</p>
<p>Option 2, meanwhile, would be the same in regards to branding and
signage, but the ‘enhancement of bilingual content’, meaning that more
emphasis would be put on English and Irish.</p>
<p>However, Option 3 would entail council adopt a bilingual policy for
all branding and signage, which would see the removal of Ulster Scots
from the corporate brand and only Irish and English used on signage.</p>
<p> <strong>Prejudice</strong></p>
<p>Ms Cavanagh added that Options 2 and 3 represent changes to the use
of Ulster Scots on signage and within the corporate logo and branding.</p>
<p>However, she told the meeting that given that Option 3 represents the
‘most significant policy change’, the Working Group considered the
evidence and assessment of the potential equality impacts of Option 3 as
part of the Equality Screening process.</p><figure class="gmail-banner" id="gmail-div-gpt-mid-article"><div id="gmail-google_ads_iframe_/29764278/derrynow_article_mpu_0__container__" style="border:0pt none"></div></figure><p></p>
<p>The meeting was then told that ‘no adverse equality impacts have been
identified’ and the proposed policy would be screened out for Equality
Impact Assessment.</p>
<p>“The rights of members of the public to access services and
information in Ulster-Scots is not diminished by a decision not to
include Ulster-Scots on branding and signage going forward,” she added.<br>
Ms Cavanagh added that while the removal of Ulster-Scots here may have a
potential impact upon ‘Good Relations’, a range of ‘mitigating
measures’ have been identified to address this.</p>
<p>She said that these measures including ‘tackling prejudice and
promoting understanding via Language Awareness programmes’ and
‘facilitating increased communication between different linguistic
groups’.</p>
<p>Commenting, the DUP’s David Ramsey cautioned council against making a
‘hasty decision’ on a sensitive issue, and warned that any proposed
change to the use of Ulster-Scots could ‘re-open’ divisions and create
‘new barriers’.</p>
<p> <strong>'Right result'</strong></p>
<p>He added that Ulster-Scots was used ‘on a daily basis in our speech’,
and proposed that any decision on the issue is deferred, which was
seconded by Sinn Fein’s Brian McMahon.</p>
<p>The SDLP’s John Boyle added that ‘more time’ to discuss the issue ‘may afford a more mature debate’.<br>
The independent councillor Gary Donnelly, who was also part of the
working group, then asked for ‘clarification’ on how long the matter
would be deferred.</p>
<p>“When are we deferring this to?” he asked.</p>
<p>“We’ve had very lengthy discussions so there’s nothing hasty about
this. We’ve spoken to Ulster-Scots activists and there’s been a number
of meetings with the Working Group, so I don’t see where the SDLP are
coming from in seeking to defer it to have a more mature conversation.”</p>
<p>The DUP’s David Ramsey said that the deferral would allow a ‘wider range of people’ to be involved in the discussions.</p>
<p>Cllr Donnelly then replied that his question on how long the matter would be deferred hadn’t been answered.</p>
<p>“As long as necessary because we need the right result for everybody,” Alderman Ramsey replied.<br>
The independent unionist councillor Maurice Devenney warned that any
proposed change to the use of Ulster-Scots would send out a 'very severe
message’ to the community.</p>
<p>The matter was then put to a vote, with a majority supporting a deferral on council accepting a new language policy.</p>
<p><strong>Pictured above: Our council is the only one of 11 in the
North that has a trilingual policy in respect of corporate branding and
signage - meaning that it features English, Irish and Ulster-Scots.</strong></p></div></section></article></section>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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