My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 43A in the name of my noble friend Lord Morrow, but, before I do, I too send my best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, since she cannot be here. I hope that she is enjoying the proceedings by video; I am sure she is. We hope to see her back in her rightful place very soon.
I also agree with noble Lords who have mentioned that it is a matter of regret that we are debating this matter at all here in this place and that it should be a matter for the Assembly. Of course, it is not by accident or some kind of inevitability that it is being debated here; it is a deliberate decision of the Government to bring it here. That is something that we debated yesterday on another matter to do with abortion regulations. These are devolved matters, and the devolution settlement
should be respected, whatever the issue and whatever our view of that issue may be. If it is a matter that is devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, it should remain there. That is the clear position as far as I am concerned; otherwise, we pick and choose the issues that we decide to legislate on in this place, which cannot be right.
On the NDNA agreement, I just say to the Government that we look forward to all aspects of it being delivered. There is an outstanding matter in relation to the restoration of the internal market of the United Kingdom, and I look forward to rapid progress on that, in line with taking forward these other matters under NDNA—there are others matters under that agreement that are outstanding.
Talking of agreements, there has been reference to 1998, going back to the Belfast agreement and the subsequent agreement at St Andrews that amended it. It is true that none of this demand by Sinn Féin for Irish language provision was a part of the main negotiation on the Belfast agreement. Of course, much more recently we had the Assembly elections in 2016 and then the unfortunate collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2017, when Sinn Féin walked out of the Executive and Martin McGuinness resigned as Deputy First Minister. We then had three years in which the Assembly did not operate. We need to remember that, just prior to that, Sinn Féin has agreed a draft programme for government with the DUP—those two parties were in government together. Sinn Féin did not put forward Irish language provision in that, yet it became Sinn Féin’s cause célèbre in the subsequent years.
There is a lot of revisionism in terms of the importance of all this and the priorities, but when you work through the timelines and so on, a lot of this is not borne out by the actuality and reality of the situation. This was not a matter that Sinn Féin made a priority at the time, but it subsequently made it a priority in order to keep the institutions down for three years. That is worth bearing in mind in the context of where we are at the moment with the institutions and the need to implement the whole NDNA agreement.
I turn to Amendment 43A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow. When the Minister made the case for the Bill at Second Reading, he referred to the fact that the Government had made available some funds—I think it was in the region of £4 million—to the Irish Language Investment Fund
“to support capital projects associated with the Irish language.”—[Official Report, 7/6/22; col. 1097.]
This commitment, it was said, was based in the section of the NDNA agreement that dealt with Northern Ireland’s “unique circumstances”.
However, when you read that section of the document, it contains merely a passing reference:
“This could include areas such as … Support for languages and broadcasting”.
There was no explicit commitment to £4 million or any other sum for capital projects, yet this passing reference has crystallised into a hard figure for investment. This £4 million of investment follows £8 million that has already been spent by the UK Government on building Irish language centres in Northern Ireland. My understanding is that this £4 million is likely to be matched by the
Irish Government, so the total for building Irish language centres is likely to be nearer £16 million. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether he has had any discussions with or heard from the Irish Government on that point. Has there been any similar investment for the Ulster Scots community? I am sad to say that the answer is, no, there has not been—not a single penny.
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As part of NDNA, the Government put an additional £1 million into the Irish Language Broadcast Fund and the same into the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund. This additional allocation for Ulster Scots was welcome, but it was a one-off, and ignores the fact that the Irish Language Broadcast Fund has for years received triple the amount of money that has been going into the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund. This disparity is made all the more unfair by the fact that Ulster-Scots programming has very favourable viewing figures in Northern Ireland, appealing to audiences across the community in Northern Ireland and Scotland in a way that the Irish language programmes sometimes do not. The BBC in particular has commented on the very favourable reception to some of these programmes, and their high quality.
The Irish language community has a stand-alone structure for supporting east-west projects with Scotland, supported by ring-fenced resources from Belfast, Dublin and Edinburgh. Is there any such support for east-west projects for Ulster Scots? Despite the clue being in the name, there is, sadly, no such support. If the principle of parity of esteem is to be upheld, it is vital that there is equality of treatment in funding, and some compensation, I suggest, for its absence hitherto—we are not starting from an equal playing field.
In this regard, I know that some noble Lords made reference at Second Reading to the “small Ulster Scots community”; the implication seemed to be that, because it was small, it did not merit much attention. That characterisation is wrong. The sector of organisations dedicated to Ulster Scots is small, but that is a reflection of decades of underinvestment compared with their Irish language counterparts.