Vandals Target Irish Signs in East Belfast

0:00It's March 31st, Europe news today starts now, AI powered and always on. By lingual street signs with Irish at Shandon Park in East Belfast got hit by vandals again overnight from Monday to Tuesday. Two signs at the knock road end took the brunt. One had the Irish name covered in white paint. The others slathered over with union flag stickers. This is the third attack on these signs since they went up last year. Back in December, black paint hid the Irish wording on two others. In two months before that, someone sliced the Irish part out with what looked like an angle grinder. Police treated those earlier hits as hay crimes and are digging into this latest one too, though they haven't commented yet. The signs only got the green light after Belfast City Council flipped the block by alliance and DUP members in June last year overturned the next month. A resident survey showed most folks against it. 49.59% said no, just 16.8% yes. The Council's new 2022 policy made it easier, dropping the needed support from 66.6% to

1:04only 15%. Tensions around Irish language signs clearly run deep in East Belfast, but police are on the case as the community watches what comes next.