The Irish Language Act mentioned in the 2006 St Andrews agreement was to be based on “the experience of Wales.”
References to Welsh language legislation, both as an example and as a UK precedent, are still constantly made when arguing for a similar law here.
Yet the experience of Wales has been largely ignored in Northern Ireland, even as our own language debate has topped the political agenda.
As with so many aspects of devolution, it seems our interest in the details peters out beyond Larne.
Wales might seem to have a very different political context to Northern Ireland because its language legislation has effectively universal support. From nationalist Plaid Cymru to the Conservatives, all parties back strong protection. In fact, the Tories go further than most - in 2006, the year of the St Andrews agreement, they proposed making Welsh an official language with equal standing to English, modelled on the protection of Irish in the Republic.
While such a consensus may be alien to Northern Ireland it remains a useful comparator, as it means any issue causing problems in Wales is likely to cause even more difficulties here.
The first Welsh Language Act was passed in 1993, under a Conservative government. The act adopted a scheme-based rather than a rights-based model - instead of giving everyone a right to deal with officialdom in Welsh, it created a duty on all public bodies to adopt schemes on how to conduct their business in Welsh. Schemes might include producing bilingual documents, identifying all Welsh speakers in the organisation, tasking them with handling Welsh language calls and correspondence and so on.
When you hear the phrase “rights-based” in Northern Ireland’s language debate that is not necessarily a general platitude. It is often a specific rejection of the experience of Wales in favour of something more like the law in the Republic of Ireland, which is rights-based.
The Welsh have found schemes to be sufficient, even in a society with a large number of native speakers and extensive Welsh-speaking areas.
Comparing the fate of indigenous languages in Wales and Ireland suggests a rights-based approach simply creates theoretical demands, as opposed to actual methods to supply them.
Where the scheme-based approach ran into trouble in Wales was with the bureaucratic need for consistency. Leaving public bodies to draw up individual plans led to more variety than official minds could handle.
So in 2011 the Welsh assembly passed devolved legislation, then known in Wales as a ‘measure’, to standardise how schemes are made.
This was no mere twiddling with the system - the same legislation enacted the Tory proposals by making Welsh an official language with equal standing to English. A few months later the assembly gained enhanced law-making powers in a referendum and promptly upgraded the measure to primary legislation.
The 2011 law created a powerful Welsh language commissioner to police schemes, which had previously been signed off by a promotional board.
Ministers were empowered to regulate standardisation, with the first 176-point standard enacted in 2015.
Public bodies immediately complained about the cost and difficulty of compliance. By early 2017, ministers conceded the law was too complicated and announced a review. This was welcomed by the commissioner, who blamed ministers for his convoluted remit.
As a result of that review, a new Welsh language act is expected this year, simplifying standards, abolishing the commissioner and returning oversight to a board.
There is a sense across the political spectrum that statutory protection of the language has been developed to the point of maximum effectiveness, which might be considered an ideal end-point for Stormont.
However, many Welsh language activists remain unsatisfied. Having seen schemes applied to public bodies and utilities, they now want them across all private firms. It appears this will be the new campaign battleground in Wales.
One hesitates to use the term ‘crocodiles’ - it is rarely in the nature of any organisation to say: “Job done, thanks very much, we’re off to do something else with our lives.”
Nevertheless, the experience of Wales indicates that even an ideal solution for Irish in Northern Ireland’s public sector would just cue up the same argument in the private sector. We should be ready for that debate, as non-argumentative workplaces have been one of our few achievements.
Language campaigners might also contrast Labour walking away from its legislative commitment at St Andrews with the Welsh experience of the Conservatives.
For a language deal you can trust, nobody has a better record than the Tories.
newton@irishnews.com
