The Far North members, outvoted in a passionate debate, are adamant that they have no intention of throwing in the towel.

The council decided that the Gaelic translation should continue to appear along with English throughout the council area with a slight concession that the translation would be added only in the cases where a true Gaelic name existed.

Thurso member John Rosie told the Caithness Courier that while they would have to accept that last week's defeat was the council's final word on the issue, the opposing members were taking legal advice about the possibility of a Euro-appeal.

Unleashing an attack in the council chamber, Mr Rosie criticised the authority for a lack of consultation on the signs issue, and took exception to the expense involved in including Gaelic, particularly at a time when the council was having to make swingeing cuts in its budget of up to £100 million over four years.

The Thurso member also quoted one Caithness resident whose view was that the council's Gaelic plan was "nothing less than cultural colonialism as a policy being forced down the throats of people against their will".

During the debate on Thursday, which lasted almost an hour, Mr Rosie also took a swipe at the Inverness-based Gaelic agency Bòrd na Gàidhlig's part in the authority's Gaelic plan.

He said that he appreciated the efforts of those who had tried to win concessions from Bòrd, but added: "I cannot accept that, in a democratic society, an unelected, faceless quango, totally unrepresentative of the area, should have the right to impose an alien culture on the people of Caithness."

Mr Rosie, who received strong support from fellow Caithness members David Bremner, Graeme Smith, Katrina MacNab and Robert Coghill, described the situation as "the tip of the iceberg".

He went on: "Bòrd na Gàidhlig are paying a consultant £80,000 of public money to produce a Gaelic plan for the health service, which will result in the cash-strapped NHS using money that should be spent on patient care, instead of being used for Gaelic signage. Does anyone here totally believe that this is what the public wish?"

Councillors backing the addition of Gaelic in the signs maintained there had been adequate consultation on the issue.

Inverness South SNP councillor Roy Pedersen believed that Gaelic signposting in Caithness was "an important means of giving visibility to the language, developing it as a modern language".

Mr Rosie disagreed and called on members to embark on a full public consultation.

He said: "This is a democratic method to give local people the opportunity to express their views on a very contentious matter where a minority is seeking to make the area one homogeneous grouping, a situation that never was and never will be.

"None of us should be afraid of public consultation, except, perhaps, those who would be determined to force through a policy regardless of the views of the public. That can only be described as undemocratic in the extreme, and serve to bring both the Gaelic policy and this council into disrepute."

Mr Rosie questioned whether an accurate translation could be made in some cases.

He told members: "You only have to look at the Tore roundabout to see that a Gaelic name has been invented for Thurso, which is without question of Norse origin."

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