(Seo alt ónár bhfoireann Gaeltachta. Is féidir an bunleagan as Gaeilge a léamh anseo)

NIGEL FARAGE’S PARTY was not planning to ban Irish-language election literature in Northern Ireland – as had been reported earlier today – Reform UK has indicated in a statement to The Journal.

The party’s deputy leader Richard Tice and other MPs – including former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman – had put their names to an amendment to election legislation that was due to be debated in Westminster today.

Under that amendment, the use of languages other than English and Welsh on election literature would have been banned, with penalties to be imposed on those who breached these provisions – a prison term of up to six months, a fine, or both. The specific clauses relating to the penalties that would apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were cited explicitly in the amendment being proposed by Reform UK, clause 107.

This was reported by the Byline Times, a British online publication, and The National in Scotland, in articles that emphasised the ban that would follow on the use of Scottish Gaelic and Scots in Scotland and literature in Irish or Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland.

These languages were not explicitly named in the amendment being proposed by Reform UK.

The Journal asked Reform UK what exactly they were proposing.

“The amendment was drafted to apply in England and Wales,” said a spokesperson in a statement issued in response to our query.

“Its aim is to protect electoral integrity by ensuring that elections are conducted in the home languages of the United Kingdom, covering languages such as English and Welsh, but excluding languages such as Urdu and Bengali, as was recently noted in Gordon and Denton.

“In the same vein, our MPs in Scotland are examining the possibilities of introducing a Bill to the Parliament there to ensure that elections in Scotland are conducted only in Gaelic, Scots and English.”

There was then a back-and-forth with Reform UK over the provision relating to penalties, which specifically stated that people who used languages other than English or Welsh in Scotland and Northern Ireland would be penalised.

“This was an administrative error – a Parliamentary Office amended the proposal to include a specific reference to Scotland and Northern Ireland that was not in the draft we originally proposed.”

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The spokesperson confirmed in a further statement that the Bill had been set aside and that when it came before Parliament again there would be a specific clarification on these issues to ensure that these proposals would only apply in England or Wales.

When it was first reported that languages other than English and Welsh would be banned, it attracted criticism from parties such as the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru in Wales, and from Conradh na Gaeilge in Ireland.

Pádraig Ó Tiarnaigh of An Dream Dearg referred to the protection Irish has under the identity and language legislation in the North – the same legislation that established the office of the Irish Language Commissioner in Northern Ireland – and the ending last year of the ability to repeal legislation from the era of the Penal Laws which had banned the use of Irish in the courts.

There is no clarity on Reform UK’s position regarding the case of Cornish – a language still spoken in Cornwall – and a specific party that contests elections there, Mebyon Kernow.

The Journal’s Gaeltacht initiative is supported by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme

This article was originally written in the reporter’s native Irish and has been translated to English here. AI was used as part of the translation process before final edits.