There are few voices I find more breakfast-ruining than that of Paul Givan. It’s a sweet voice, so sweet it slides from left ear to right (Be quiet, Virginia), then out and drizzles over my Rice Krispies, staining everything it touches. I know I should have more respect for the unique voice of each human being, but Paul makes it very hard.
So what was he saying? Well to be honest, I’m not sure. The voice just kept oozing on. Joel Taggart was trying to get him to respond to a ministerial briefing paper that has been unearthed which shows that a senior Department of Communities official in late 2016 advised that the majority of applicants for the bursary programme were children from deprived background who, if they weren’t awarded the financial support, couldn’t afford to travel to Donegal for the summer language course. Givan responded “No scheme”. Two days before Christmas, he announced he was withdrawing the £55,000 Bursary.
Irish language activists and the nationalist community generally were outraged by this convincing impersonation of Scrooge. Having studied the damage to his party and his own image, Givan three weeks later restored the funding. It was like a man who sets fire to his neighbour’s house because he dislikes said neighbour; then when the rest of the street tell him what a mean-souled excrescence he is, declares he has employed some builders to replace the house. The question is, of course, why did he burn down the house in the first place?
Perhaps Givan has some entirely honourable reason for his Christmas eve snatch of funding from the hands of children, but he didn’t give it this morning. Instead he dribbled tunefully on in a plethora of words in which two kept re-appearing : Sinn Féin.
So now you know. It was all the Shinners’ fault. Nice one, Paul.
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