DUP minister feels the heat and reverses his axing of Líofa Irish-language fund

DUP minister tells BBC he ‘found’ cash not for good of Irish but to deny Sinn Féin election issue

DUP Communities Minister Paul Givan gave in to public and political pressure and restored the funding he’d cut in Christmas week for the Líofa Irish-language bursary grant for young people just hours before a planned protest by lobby group An Dream Dearg at his Belfast City Centre HQ at lunchtime on Thursday.

But the good-humoured protest went ahead as campaigners kept up the pressure for an Irish Language Act, Acht na Gaeilge.

The hugely upbeat nature of the protest was attended by activists of many years standing and children from a number of Irish-language schools It was sparked by the Christmas week announcement by Givan that his department was cutting funding for the hugely popular Líofa bursaries scheme that funded children from low-income families to attend summer courses in the Donegal Gaeltacht.

Despite the minister’s announcement just a couple of hours prior to the scheduled protest that he was reinstating the £50,000 funding after he miraculously ‘found’ the money in his budget, the protest went ahead.

Sinn Féin Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile, who was at the protest, told An Phoblacht:

“Givan’s volte face is too little too late.”

His move in cutting the funding was only the latest in a long list of calculated snubs delivered by various DUP ministers to the Irish-speaking community since last May’s Assembly election, the east Belfast Sinn Féin senator said.

Coming on top of DUP First Minister Arlene Foster’s mishandling of the Renewable Heat Initiative fund scandal and other DUP provocations, the Líofa cut news (delivered on 23 December with the salutation “Happy Christmas”) led to the resignation of deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness from the DUP/Sinn Féin partnership government and seemingly inevitable elections.

“DUP Education Minister Peter Weir has knocked back various proposals in the Irish-medium education sector while, in a really petty move, DUP Agriculture Minister Michelle McIlveen replaced the Irish name of her department’s fisheries protection vessel with an English name,” Niall Ó Donnghaile said.

“Líofa was the straw that broke the camel's back and we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the DUP has set its face against Acht na Gaeilge.”

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And the DUP minister exposed his hypocrisy with his brazen admission on BBC later on Thursday that – despite claims that his initial decision was budgetary, not political – his restoration of the fund has been for purely partisan reasons in the anticipated DUP election campaign.

Speaking to the BBC’s Evening Extra programme, Paul Givan said:

“I was not prepared to allow Sinn Féin to use that £50,000 as a political weapon against us in the upcoming election as a tool to rally their troops, and so I’ve taken that away from them.”

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