Thursday, 13 October 2011 Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement Debate ..Dail Eireann. Comhchoiste umFhorfheidhmiu Aoine an Cheasta…Chairman/Cathaoirleach Dominic Hannigan,TD/FD
Dr. Ian Adamson: A huge amount has already been done in terms of common heritage. I delineated the involvement of President McAleese and Senator Martin McAleese in the commemorations of the First World War. For many years, we have been trying to get local communities, especially from working class areas, to come together to look at cultural development. Mr. Newell has been very prominent in that area.
The main problem that persists is one of two narratives. There is a Protestant, loyalist narrative and a republican narrative. What we look at in terms of our Somme association and our Ullans group – one of which concentrates on the First World War and the other on language issues – is to create a grand narrative which includes both narratives equally and without rancour. Our Somme Association is represented on the Unionist Centenary Committee that has been formed in Belfast. As far as it is concerned, however, the association has been a cross-community association since its inception. It has been partly involved with the development of the Messines project for which President McAleese and Senator Martin McAleese have been so responsible.
We also run the Ulster Tower, Thiepval and that was described in the early days as something which was Protestant and Unionist and to do with the 36th Ulster Division. We broadened it, however, to include the 16th Irish Division which also fought at the Somme and had equal casualties at the Somme at Guillemont and Ginchy. This has indeed been broadened to the extent that we now have a church that has been rededicated, through the Bishop of Amiens, as a memorial for that particular division and out of that, we have had a coming together of minds. We have been helped particularly with this through the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association here, the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Foreign Affairs, without whose help we could not have proceeded. This has had its ramifications, even up to the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Islandbridge. That visit worked well in that she visited the republican area first and then Islandbridge.
The language issue is a fundamental issue which has not been addressed to the extent it should have been. Our Ullans group, which is a cross-community group with prominent Irish speakers on board, is looking at Ulster Gaelic. We do not speak “Dáilish” – the language of the Dáil. We speak proper Ulster Gaelic. We put a caveat on the development of “Dáilish”. That group to which I have just referred includes the Irish language in a major way. It is focused on Bangor as the centre of development of early Irish literature and culture. Bangor is now a Unionist area, but we cannot forget that it was there in the 5th and 6th centuries that the Irish language first evolved into its written form, when the Ulster sagas were written down and the most beautiful Gaelic poetry, including “The Voyage of Bran” and the Mongán cycles, were written down by the monks.
There is a festival to be held next week, the Blackbird Festival, which gets its name from the little poem about the blackbird which sung on the Belfast lough which was written down by an old monk in Bangor. He got fed up doing his Latin homework and wrote a lovely little poem in old Gaelic. It is the feast of St. Gallen or St. Gall. We are developing the festival under the auspices of our own group and the Forbairt Feirste in west Belfast. It is a coming together, in language terms, in our areas which has been unparalleled. We are particularly fortunate that we have two interested Ministers at Stormont dealing with education and the arts, culture and leisure issues. We look forward to working closely with them. It is only on the ground that we will be seen to be effective.
We thank Dáil Members for everything they have done so far, particularly in helping us through the Somme interventions and the development of our Ullans group. We are also organising a Feast of St. Columbanus event which will take in all of the community groups in Belfast on that feast day. We hope St. Columbanus will become the patron saint of Europe. We would like to be able to put forward this suggestion at the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin next year, when St. Columbanus will be included as one of the main saints. We were told a number of years ago, under the auspices of Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, that St. Columbanus could not become the patron saint of Europe because St. Benedict already was its patron saint. However, the man who advised the Pope at the time was a chap called Ratzinger. Perhaps, with the passage of time, the same gentleman might feel more favourably disposed towards St. Columbanus. It would be great for Ireland and Europe as a whole if that were to happen. This has all come from ordinary people on the ground, loyalist and republican. That is a very important fact.
Chairman: Thank you, High Sheriff.
To be continued