Liam Ó Bruadair, who has died aged 86, was my father’s best friend. In the late 1960s, Liam, a working-class man from Belfast, and his wife Cristín McGuinness, together with eight other couples, including his brother, Donnchadh, and his wife, decided they wished to raise their families in the Irish language, which they had all learned to speak as adults.
Knowing that the language would have to be reinforced outside the home, they built nine houses on the Shaws Road on the outskirts of West Belfast, and opened a primary school, Bunscoil Phobal Feirste, in 1971.
At a time when a hostile unionist establishment still ruled at Stormont, it was the first Irish-medium school in Belfast in centuries. They had to fund it themselves until 1984, when the Department of Education (Northern Ireland) took it over; initially it catered for nine pupils in a portable building. Today it has 400 pupils and a modern building.
Liam was born in the Docks area, the second of eight children of Samuel Broderick (the English spelling of the family name), a berthing master, and Eilís Monaghan. Liam went to the Star of the Sea elementary school and the Christian Brothers technical school, both in Belfast, and later became an apprentice carpenter.
He was a keen boxer, played Gaelic football and knew he was going to marry Cristín, a hairdresser, after their first date; they married in 1966 and had seven children. In his 40s, Liam took night classes and became a lecturer at the Municipal Technical College (now Belfast Met).
The school proved inspirational in Belfast and across the north of Ireland. There are now nine such primary schools and a thriving secondary school, Coláiste Feirste. And there are 40 Irish-medium pre-schools and primary schools across the north, to be found in every one of the six counties, along with two secondary schools plus four Irish-medium units in English-medium schools. About 5,000 pupils attend the primary schools, with approximately 1,500 in secondary schools. Liam’s nephew, Diarmaid Ua Bruadair, is principal of the secondary school in Dungiven, Co Derry.
I hated Irish in my teens. It was compulsory in my grammar school and it seemed irrelevant, but always lingering in the background were Liam, Cristín and their family, their presence giving me a sense that I was missing something.
My daughters are now growing up bilingual, as did two of their cousins, who went to the Shaws Road school. At Liam’s funeral many people switched casually back and forth between Irish and English as they paid their respects.
Cristín died in 2018, and their son, Fiontán in 2020. He is survived by their children Eilís, Conall, Úna, Róisín, Ciarán and Clare, and eight grandchildren.
