DUP leader Gavin Robinson has said both members of his party and some of its elected representatives are fluent in Irish – but who could they be?
The revelation that there are Gaeilgeoiri in the DUP’s ranks will have made many people’s ears prick up.
For a party that has effectively opposed every measure that promotes the Irish language, it was a surprise when Mr Robinson made the announcement on the Nolan Show on Tuesday.
The DUP hasn’t responded to requests for it to name names, which is perhaps understandable. Party members fessing up about their proficiency in the language isn’t regarded as a vote winner, at least among its traditional base.
However, the Irish News was already aware of that there were Irish speakers in the DUP. In fact, one of them, Dublin-born Catholic Ciarán Ó Coigligh, featured in our pages in 2019.
In an interview in which he voiced reservations about Pope Francis’s papacy and spoke of how the “one per cent” of the population with gay tendencies could overcome their urges by “resisting temptation and withdrawing from that lifestyle”, the 71-year-old academic told how he was an accomplished Gaeilgeoir who previously held left-wing, republican sympathies.
Now a card-carrying member of the DUP, he joined the party “some years ago” and has travelled north on a number of occasions to attend party conferences.
The other DUP member who is known to excel in the native language is Belfast councillor Ruth Brooks, wife of East Belfast MLA David Brooks, and very possibly the “elected representative” mentioned by Mr Robinson.
However, the Titanic representative, who works in Mr Robinson’s Westminster office, remains reticent when it comes to discussing her second language.
Mrs Brooks was brought-up in Co Cork, where her father was a church minister. Irish was part of her education at a state school before the family moved north in the mid-00s.
Despite her personal affiliation, Mrs Brooks has in the past voiced opposition to the promotion of the Irish language by Belfast City Council.
It’s possible there are others in the DUP with more than a mere cúpla focal but they prefer to remain inconspicuous.