evidence: Seven thousand Irish-language activists took to the streets of Belfast in May 2022 to lobby for the implementation of an Irish language act which has been denied since it was promised in the Good Friday Agreement nearly 25 years ago. The proponents of such an act are not asking for anything extraordinary. They wish to be able to communicate in Irish with government departments, to use Irish as their everyday language, and to allow politicians to speak it in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The support for an Irish language act is not limited to Sinn Féin – Irish republican and democratic socialist political party – it is also backed by the Irish government, the SDLP, the Alliance Party, and the Green Party. In the meantime, in June 2022, the government of the United Kingdom introduced legislation that will protect Northern Ireland’s native language. This marks the first time such legislation was introduced by the UK government. The UK government has introduced a bill that will grant protection to the Irish language in Northern Ireland. [...] The British government has now acted after years of pressure from campaigners and because the Northern Ireland Executive failed to reach agreement to honor promises to do so. But there could be another motivation: it is unlikely the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) would ever have agreed to officially recognise the Irish language, so this removes a possible stumbling block in any future negotiations to get the power-sharing administration back up and running.