THE Minister for Culture Arts and Leisure, Gregory Campbell, has vowed that Ulster Scots and Irish cultural outlooks will receive parity of funding while he is in office - whether people like it or not.
In a frank interview with The Sentinel, Mr Campbell, said not only was it his objective to treat everyone equally, but it was his ambition to eliminate disparity.
Asked to comment on his stance over the Irish language Act now that he was the Ministe
r in charge, Mr Campbell said: "There still appears to be some misunderstanding around this issue.
"It was the St Andrews Agreement just over 15 months ago, where the British Government talked to Sinn Fein about the implementation of the Irish Language Act.
"Neither Sinn Fein, the British Government, mentioned the possibility of an Irish Language Act to us. Therefore, whenever we saw it, we said, and the record shows that at St Andrews, at the conclusion of the conference, we issued a statement with a whole range of issues in it and one of them was the reference to the Irish language Act where we said 'We have not been approached, we have not been asked, and presumably the reason why we haven't been is because people knew what the answer would be - that we would be against it'."
"It doesn't need an Irish Language Act, and my position as the Minister responsible is to say to people, very simply, in cultural terms there are two big blocks.
"One is an Irish language or an Irish cultural enthusiasts and people who want to adopt that and that's perfectly legitimate. The Government supports them in doing that and gives them money. "Then there is the Ulster Scots cultural outlook, and that's perfectly legitimate as well. Neither of the two of them are greater than the other. They are both perfectly legitimate expressions of cultural outlook by large numbers of people in Northern Ireland."
"The problem has been that up until very recently the Irish cultural identity received tens of thousands, more, tens of millions of pounds more than the Ulster Scots tradition.
"So my objective, whenever looking at comments that people make like us disparaging the Irish language Act, is to turn it round and say 'No, what you've go to do is you've got to look at the public funding of these two cultural outlooks and you see a huge disparity'.
The Minister added: "My ambition and objective is going to be to eliminate that disparity. People have sat and talked and protested about inequality. Well, they are going to get equality, now they might not like getting that equality, but they are going to get it."
