Coláiste Feirste
irish-medium school in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Coláiste Feirste is the only secondary-level Irish-medium school in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Previously known as Méanscoil Feirste, the gaelscoil (Irish language school) is located in the west of the city in a new facility on Belfast's Falls Road. Founded in 1991 with just nine pupils, as of 2022 the school had around 850 pupils and 65 teachers.
The school was first situated in Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich and was opened under the supervision of the first school principal Fergus O'Hare who was replaced in 2002 by Garaí Mac Roibeaird as principal. Mícheal Mac Giolla Ghunna has been principal since 2019. The school is now situated in Beechmount, the former home of the Riddel family.
Notable former pupils
Niall Ó Donnghaile - Former Lord Mayor of Belfast and Sinn Féin Senator in Seanad Éireann.
Aisling Reilly - Two time singles World Handball Champion and current Sinn Féin MLA for West Belfast.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Coláiste Feirste” is irish-medium school in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Coláiste, Feirste and irish-medium, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “irish-medium school in Belfast, Northern Ireland” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5150373. Authority coordinates are 54.592, -5.972. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2022, 2002 and 2019.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Coláiste Feirste” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.