Post by earl on Mar 11, 2008 20:36:11 GMT
IT'S a heck of a barney over the Blarney. Flights with Ireland's national airline have traditionally greeted passengers in both English and Irish Gaelic.
But now the Celtic salutation has been abandoned for Aer Lingus's new route to Belfast amid claims that a multi-lingual welcome would have to include Ulster-Scots.
As part of the power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland, Irish Gaelic and the dialect spoken by descendents of Scottish immigrants were awarded equal status.
As a result, there were calls for "Walcome tae Bilfawst" to be announced alongside "Welcome to Belfast" and "Failte go Beal Feirste".
A spokeswoman for Aer Lingus said the decision to remove Irish was made for operational reasons.
She said: "Irish is still spoken on our flights out of Dublin and Shannon. We looked at how we
were going to do this in the north and the advice we were given was that if we had Irish we'd probably need to have Ulster Scots.
"We were looking at a scenario on a Belfast to Rome flight where you could actually have four languages being spoken: English, Irish, Ulster Scots and Italian. We just took a decision that it was going to be impractical and confined the announcements to English, and that was the basis of the decision."
The Equality Commission Northern Ireland, however, said employment laws in the north do not refer to language. "There's nothing I'm aware of that would legally require them to use both languages any more than any other employer in Northern Ireland," said a spokesman.
Aer Lingus is not subject to the stricter legal equality requirements for public bodies in Northern Ireland, and many of them do not use both languages either, the commission stated.
But now the Celtic salutation has been abandoned for Aer Lingus's new route to Belfast amid claims that a multi-lingual welcome would have to include Ulster-Scots.
As part of the power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland, Irish Gaelic and the dialect spoken by descendents of Scottish immigrants were awarded equal status.
As a result, there were calls for "Walcome tae Bilfawst" to be announced alongside "Welcome to Belfast" and "Failte go Beal Feirste".
A spokeswoman for Aer Lingus said the decision to remove Irish was made for operational reasons.
She said: "Irish is still spoken on our flights out of Dublin and Shannon. We looked at how we
were going to do this in the north and the advice we were given was that if we had Irish we'd probably need to have Ulster Scots.
"We were looking at a scenario on a Belfast to Rome flight where you could actually have four languages being spoken: English, Irish, Ulster Scots and Italian. We just took a decision that it was going to be impractical and confined the announcements to English, and that was the basis of the decision."
The Equality Commission Northern Ireland, however, said employment laws in the north do not refer to language. "There's nothing I'm aware of that would legally require them to use both languages any more than any other employer in Northern Ireland," said a spokesman.
Aer Lingus is not subject to the stricter legal equality requirements for public bodies in Northern Ireland, and many of them do not use both languages either, the commission stated.
