Derry councillors agree to continue using Ulster Scots in all of its signs and logos despite renewed calls to have it withdrawn

THE use of Ulster Scots in Derry’s council will continue for the time being after a move which would have seen it removed from all council signs and its logo. It comes after a Derry City and Strabane District Council passed a resolution in January 2017 to ‘initiate a comprehensive policy review on language usage including corporate branding and signage’. A cross-party Working Group was then established made up of The Mayor, 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. Derry and Strabane is currently the only council out of the 11 in the north which currently operates trilingual policy in respect of corporate branding and signage, meaning that it features English, Irish and Ulster-Scots. Earlier this month, the findings of the review were presented to a meeting of the council’s Governance and Strategic Planning Committee, where councillors deferred making any decision on the future use of Ulster Scots until further consultation was carried out. Councillors were asked to ratify the decision at its monthly meeting on Thursday afternoon, where the Cllr Gary Donnelly proposed that council now approve the third option put forward following the findings of the working group. That option would see 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. Commenting, Cllr Donnelly said that the review of language usage had been a ‘very through process’, during which three options were agreed. He added that ‘for some bizarre reason, a fourth option that was never discussed’ had now emerged to have further consultation with outside groups. “I’m very suspicious of that,” he said. “It’s my opinion that what’s going on here is that people are pandering to the ‘curry my yoghurt’ element in unionism.” He continued that this section of unionism was ‘bigoted’, which was being encourage by council’s ‘servile’ approach to the issue. Cllr Donnelly added he believed that it was also a ‘precursor’ to a deal between Sinn Fein and the DUP which would see the Irish language ‘sacrificed’ for the sake of politics. He told the meeting that Ulster Scots was more of cultural heritage than a ‘written one’, and that more resources should be put into that than ‘signs’. Responding, the DUP’s Drew Thompson said that in Cllr Donnelly’s ‘rant’, he said ‘he was suspicious of us in the DUP’. “The person we need to be suspicious of is him,” he added. Alderman Thompson said that the decision had been taken to defer the decision at a previous meeting, and accused Cllr Donnelly of being opposed to any move on the issue which was ‘level-headed’ and aimed at ‘getting communities together’. “All we’re asking for is for more people to be engaged in this process,” he continued.