Re: Re: Cork Harbour
@samuel j wrote:
LAPs – you are right. It should. Reading through the Cobh Lap, which was only adopted by the TC in May 2005, there are wonderful passages. volume 1 page 9 and 10 are great. Alas much of iffy estates we now see were given planning pre 05 and Section on page 10 F this is exactly the area the garda building is…. Victorian buildings to its left, right and above. If the LAP is enforeced then great but I fear much of it is akin to closing the gate after the horse has bolted.
http://www.cobh.ie/files/Volume_1.pdf
http://www.cobh.ie/files/Volume_2.pdf
Thanks Sam for drawing our attention to such a wonderful document as the Cobh Development Plan. It really is a mine of comical entertainment. Were it not for the numerous grammatical errors it might have been entered for the Booker Prize for it certainly is a masterpiece of contemporary fiction.
Praxiteles would like to illustrate this with a few examples: the minds (if so we wish to call them) in operation in the Urban District Council cite a brace of directives from the Minister of the Environment on the lofty subject of bilingual place names. By that I take it mean that a sign indicating the name of a place should be in both English and Irish. Thus a traditional English place name will have an Irish equivalant and vice versa.
The Cobh Urban District Council, however, appears to have confused bilingualism and promotion of the Irish language. While not mutually exclusive terms, bilingualism and promotion of the Irish language are not synonymous terms.
On page 70 of the Development Plan the following is stated: “The Town Council has been to the fore in this movement [promotion of the Irish language] and will continue this policy as directed by the Minister for the Environment, directive (sic) F. 15/74 and F. 2/86, which states (sic): ‘Local authorities should use a bilingual form of name plates for new housing areas and for new plates in old housing areas when they are due for replacement if an English only format is used at present'” (p. 70). We are then informed: “Under new regulations introduced in 2004 all signs and place names must be indicated in Irish, along with all other signs and council produced documents”. And then, the following is intimated. “The most recently constructed council housing estate was given an Irish name. It is the intention (sic) that all new signs and place names that are erected will be in Irish. It is the intention (sic) also that all signs and documents will be in Irish” (p. 71).
What are we to make of all of this? Did the estate with the Irish name get a bilingual name-plate? Furthermore, given the amount of EU law on official languages withing the EU, it would be interesting to hear from some of our legal friends whether EU law might not require both the minister to amend his directives and Cobh Urban District Council their “intentions”.
Notwithstanding the UDC’s “intentions”, I have been unable to find an Irish language version of the Council’s minutes on the UDC webpage. When are we likely to see that?
