Belfast Council Rejects Irish Street Sign

On April 2nd, Belfast City Council just turned down a plan for an Irish language

street sign at Stormon Park, right near the Stormon Estate.

Entrance.

The vote was super close, 29 against and 28 in favor.

The Irish name would have been Pairk, Janak, Ananfa.

A survey of residents there hit the council's 15% support threshold

with 15.7% in favor out of 83 responses.

But 67% were straight up against it, so the committee killed it first,

and the full council backed that narrow decision.

Senfine and the SDOP pushed hard, saying the threshold was met so it should go up.

Unionists and the Alliance Party fired back at the big majority opposition made it a no-go,

and they worried about how the data was collected.

Meanwhile, council flipped a committee call and greenlit a sign for on-slow

gardens of Kregorode, where 25% backed it.

That scared any on-slow in Irish.

Plus, four more streets are getting their Irish signs.

Kimberly Street, St. John's Place, Indiana Avenue, and Mountain View Drive.

Shows how these debates keep splitting the council along familiar lines.