‘Make Belfast’s St Patrick’s celebrations less Irish,’ urges TUV councillor

A TUV councillor has asked Belfast City Council to make St Patrick’s Day celebrations less Irish.

Ron McDowell suggested the annual event should be more inclusive.

He said it was more a celebration of Irishness, rather than a celebration of St Patrick.

His comments came at a council committee meeting this week.

At the City Growth and Regeneration Committee meeting, elected representatives passed a Sinn Féin proposal to accept council officers’ recommendation to agree an allocation of £300,000 from pre-agreed departmental budgets for the St Patrick’s Day Festival.

It will be the same budget amount as that used for 2024.

Mr McDowell, the council’s sole TUV member, said: “St Patrick’s Day means many different things to many different people across the city. We are thinking about inclusiveness, and involving everybody in it.

“For the people of my community, we celebrated St Patrick’s Day last year, and there were events in the Orange Hall. We celebrated Patrick the evangelist, and the life story, rather than being a celebration of Irishness.”

Mr McDowell asked what funding pool was used for the events in his community during St Patrick’s Day 2024, and if they were from the main funding festival pool.

The committee director said they came from the community festivals funding grant, which is a small grant award.

Mr McDowell said: “Looking at this (St Patrick’s Day) funding from my community’s point of view, and the shareholders, it seems to be a celebration of Irishness, rather than a celebration of St Patrick, of whom there are different viewpoints within the city, even though we all mark St Patrick’s Day.

“Is there anything to make it inclusive? Is there anything for people, who celebrate St Patrick’s Day on the Shankill Road, to be stakeholders in this and enjoy it in the same way?”

The committee director said: “It is important to stress that our first principle is that all elements of this are an event for the city.

“The approach to St Patrick’s Day in 2024 was ‘People, Place and Planet’ and that was reflected in some of the architecture in the carnival, the storytelling and the music.”

He said: “In terms of the community groups that were engaged across the city, they were representative of all the traditions in the community, and that is something we want to do more of in the future.”

He added: “It would never be for a council officer to engage with one community at the cost of another.”

But Mr McDowell replied: “Well then there is an awful lot more work that needs to be done there. The fact is there are side-celebrations going on (from people) that don’t feel they can come down and enjoy the festival and the spectacle with everybody else, which shows we are not quite as inclusive as we would like to be.”

A Sinn Féin councillor replied: “Would you accept the same point on the Twelfth?”

The Deputy Mayor, DUP councillor Andrew McCormick, said: “I agree with a lot of what Councillor McDowell (said). I think we need to go out of our way and make sure we are being inclusive.

“To give credit there have been strides made from the officers involved in St Patrick’s Day celebrations over the last number of years. But it is clear there are a lot of people within the PUL community that don’t think they can come down and celebrate.

“So I would like to see more efforts being made, I would like to see more involvement with the Ulster-Scots Agency. I know you can’t make people apply for funding as such or put in an expression of interest, but I would like to see more efforts being made.

“I would like to see how we are purposely reaching out to make sure both sides of the community come together rather than feeling like they have to celebrate separately. St Patrick’s Day represents a good opportunity. There is a flag of St Patrick’s Cross that unites everybody which could be used more.”

The director said: “This is a challenging area of work. Really where we want to be with all of our events is that they are not a product of council officers, but rather that council officers are facilitating expressions of people and place from across Belfast. This is something we have put a lot of thought into, we have made some progress, but there is still a distance to go.”

He proposed a council paper to come back before the committee by September “giving a critical look” at officers and what further needs to be done for a “more expansive and rich” community engagement.

The director said: “The council has historically funded (Protestant-Unionist-Loyalist groups during St Patrick’s Day) with grant funding, and to be honest that is a bit of a blunt tool. What it actually really takes is physically working to engage with community groups about these things, and creating workshops and activities that build towards actually being part of an event.

“(It is about) providing officer time for expertise and money for community groups.

“So we are looking to see how we can possibly set ourselves up with the resources to do that. Because at the minute, to be honest, there is a bit of a challenge in terms of the expertise and resourcing, and how we are to do that.

“Just providing grants doesn’t get it done.”

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