WHAT gives with DUP Minister Paul Givan and the Irish language?
Having ignited the 2016 political firestorm over the Líofa grant which resulted in the Executive collapsing and remaining dormant for three years, a reasonable person might assume that the DUP Minister would proceed with some caution when it comes to the Irish language.
But then reason and the DUP are rarely aligned when it comes to the Irish language.
Thus, this week, the Education Minister burnished his credentials as Public Enemy Number One in the eyes of the Irish-medium education sector with the news that £5m of £6m he received to shore up under-resourced Gaelscoileanna has been allocated elsewhere.
The Líofa decision was announced in the mouth of Christmas and might have been expected to disappear amidst the hustle and bustle of the festive season. But Mr Givan's decision — involving a comically small amount of money — united the nationalist and republican community behind the Irish language sector like no other issue in recent memory. The emergence of another area of contention — this time involving a hugely more significant sum — is bound to elicit a similar whirlwind of righteous indignation.
The Minister's attempts to explain away this now-you-see-it-now-you-don't approach to ministerial funding have fallen flat. Indeed, the fact that he had to issue a bloated and impenetrable six-page statement to justify his behaviour is a sure sign that even he knows his actions can't be easily explained away.
The facts are pretty simple: The Minister received £6m from Finance Minister John O'Dowd which was to be allocated to the inspirational Irish language agency Iontaobhas na Gaelscolaíochta which helps our weakest Irish schools make their accommodation suitable for pupils who often come from the most underserved communities in the North.
Deep in the bowels of his six page statement, Minister Givan acknowledges: "My officials... submitted a bid...on the basis that Iontaobhas na Gaelscolaíochta had identified longer-term funding requirements and that... it could, as a third-party organisation operating a trust fund, utilise end-year flexibility in managing the funding."
The money was, therefore, granted to the Minister to be allocated to Irish-medium education. Yet, somewhere along the line, £5m of the £6m went walkabout, ending up shoring up other schools.
There is every chance that the matter will now land on the desk of the NI Assembly Standards Commissioner. If there is a complaint made, we don't know how the Standards Commissioner will adjudicate on these matters (and at any rate, any sanction would have to be approved by the DUP). Perhaps, the courts will intervene before that.
Suffice to say, however, the actions of a DUP minister have once again served to fray even further that little thread by which the entire Executive and Assembly is hanging.
