Bóthar Seoighe Urban Gaeltacht - A Belfast Success Story
A recent two-part documentary aired on BBC looked at the achievements of the Bóthar Seoighe urban Gaeltacht in Belfast. The Irish Houses – Scéal Phobal Bhóthar Seoighe tells the story of the small group of families who founded the Irish-speaking community in 1969.
The decision was taken by the activists to bring up their children through Irish and to make it the communal language of their area. Initially there were five families resident on Bóthar Seoighe. The construction of the houses was undertaken by the activists themselves, who pooled their skills and resources. The number of families living in the urban Gaeltacht has risen to twenty-two over the intervening years.
In 1971 the same activists founded Bunscoil Pobail Feirste to educate their children in Irish. The school survived on the goodwill and support of the parents and wider community until the mid-1980s, when it finally received recognition and a level of state funding.
Bunscoil Phobal Feirste was established as Belfast’s first Irish medium school in 1971, despite huge hostility from unionism and the British state.
For a decade and a half, it faced a hostile unionist state which would not assist in its growth. It nevertheless continued to develop until the state was forced to offer concessions. Since then it has continued to grow and now caters for over 350 students.
This Belfast Gaeltacht community celebrated its fiftieth founding last year, in 2019, and the school will do likewise in 2021. Both the urban Gaeltacht and its attendant school assisted in laying the basis for the Irish-language revival in Belfast and the wider Six Counties.
A similar urban Gaeltacht was attempted, with state assistance, by Irish speakers in Dublin in the late 1920s. Páirc na Gaeltachta was founded in Whitehall on Dublin’s Northside in 1927. However, the scheme floundered on the rocks of financial ruin soon after. A small neo-Gaeltacht set up in Cork in the 1960s did not manage to grow beyond three or four houses.
Bóthar Seoighe, then, remains unique in Ireland for its success in establishing a new and enduring Gaeltacht community in an urban setting. Huge credit is due to everyone who has made it a success, despite apparently overwhelming odds.
Fifty years on from its founding and with strong networks of Irish speakers in many towns and cities it is surely time for the establishment of more urban Gaeltachtaí in like Dublin, Cork, Derry, Limerick and other cities and towns; new urban Gaeltachtaí which draws on the lessons from a Belfast success story.