A Battle A Day?

So, I have a theory. My theory is that when D’hondt was run following the restoration of the institutions over two years ago, the DUP deliberately avoided picking up the Finance portfolio (they chose Education after Sinn Féin chose Economy) because they figured it would cause them to share in taking it in the neck from a public who despair of anything being done to improve our local circumstances. Sinn Féin on their second choice chose Finance, allowing the DUP to take Communities on the next pick. In hindsight this was something of a mistake for Sinn Féin.

Fresh from failing spectacularly over their stance on Brexit and saddled with a trade border in the Irish Sea they briefly pretended to have abolished, the last thing the DUP wanted to do was further roil their already furious base.

The ministries they opted for have allowed them to wage a subtle culture war on behalf of that base in an attempt to mollify them. The subtlety is the point of course, being open about what I believe they are doing would destabilise the institutions. Whilst there are some who may argue that the DUP would love nothing more than for the institutions to collapse, implicit in that hope is that Sinn Féin does the collapsing whilst appearing unreasonable about it. Repeatedly poking them in the eye whilst boasting about it might just lead the wider public to conclude that any collapse caused by such provocations is YOUR fault.

I have listed the cumulative actions of the two DUP ministers as recently as last May when I wrote a piece on Lyons withdrawing funding for the 40-year-old NI place name project and I feel there is no need to list them all again. But I believe a pattern from all those past events can be inferred that supports my theory. Unsurprisingly yet perhaps inevitably, here’s the latest data point from the Irish News…

A decision by DUP Education minister Paul Givan to spend most of the money previously earmarked specifically for Irish medium school facilities on other projects has been criticised. The minister’s department submitted a bid to Finance minister John O’Dowd for £6 million in the December monitoring round for Iontaobhas na Gaelscolaíochta, a trust fund which helps Irish medium schools to develop their buildings and facilities. Monitoring rounds are generally held three times a year in the Executive for Stormont departments to review spending and redirect money to where it is needed. While the bid was approved in December by the Department of Finance, just £1 million of the initial award was given to the group, with the other £5 million spent on other active school construction projects.

My theory holds that Givan and Lyons will only act in the culture war if they believe they can justify their actions in some fashion that gives them cover. Getting £6 million on the understanding that you are going to fund Irish Medium Education and spending 80% of it elsewhere made me quite keen to see just how Givan would justify it given the sheer gall that seemed involved, and he provided a written statement on the matter…

“…capital funding received through the December monitoring process was not in practice provided by the Department of Finance as earmarked funding. Such allocations are not separately monitored, reported upon or returned if unspent. That has been the long-established practice across government. To suggest otherwise is inconsistent with how in-year capital monitoring allocations have always operated”

Reading the entirety of the statement, it seems his argument is that there were no Irish Language medium projects ready to absorb the bulk of the funding, the funding would otherwise be lost, and he used the discretion afforded to him to redirect the monies towards other projects.

Paul Givan concluded his written statement by saying the complaint was an attempt to ‘manufacture grievance’ and he lists all the other actions he has taken in support of the Irish language, but this was still an effective £5 million cut to the sector taken by the Minister when it seems he received the money on the understanding it would go to that sector.

The fact that the chair of the Ionaobhas flat out disputes Givan’s reasoning must be considered and weighed against Givan’s words, as quoted in the Irish News article…

Pilib Ó Ruanaí…said he first became aware of £5million in funding having been redirected from the group in January of this year. He said pupils in the Irish medium sector are suffering due to a lack of suitable infrastructure in schools. “The minister was the one who submitted the original funding bid, which was later approved by the Finance minister, so the question is, if that’s not ring fenced, what is?” Mr Ó Ruanaí said.

“It’s deflection and obfuscation really, and what it’s saying is that we had other more immediate needs.”

There is also the fact that I simply don’t believe him. Givan’s role in the Líofa bursary controversy has never been forgotten, and the pattern of incidents that he and Lyons have generated in the past two years (many of which, but not all, touched upon the use of the Irish Language in the public sphere) in my opinion does tend to point one way.

Any single incident that provokes a row with the Department of Communities or the Department of Education seems to have a reasonable explanation that the Ministers can deploy to argue WHY they took the actions they did. But that is only if you take each incident in isolation. Take them all together, one after the other, controversy after controversy, row after row, strident defence after strident defence and that pattern emerges.

Either everyone else at Stormont has it in for the DUP ministers or they are picking fights they feel they can win to appease their base and regularly at that.

Why, it is almost as if they are fighting a battle a day. Now who coined that term?