Sinn Féin has criticised Belfast City Council’s preparations for St Patrick’s Day as “dire” and has demanded an investigation into the tendering process for festival organisations.
Last November, council officials admitted they found it “difficult” to hire a company to cover the music festivities for the 2024 celebrations, and that organisations had seen the council’s funding offer as “too low”.
At the council’s recent City Growth and Regeneration Committee, councillors heard that lot four of the four-stage open call tender process for festival creators received no responses at all.
As a result, council officials have decided to drop the March 16th Custom House Square concert. The committee director referred to “small technical reasons” in the council’s “design competition methodology” as contributing to the response from local festival organisers.
Sinn Féin councillor Conor Maskey said the council only had “the creaking bones” of a festival planned, despite St Patrick’s Day being less than two months away. He successfully proposed that the committee support a report looking at the mistakes made by the council.
The committee director told councillors: “As previously reported, we went to the market for a number of tenders, and we received one successful approach, which was for Féile an Phobail to deliver a city-wide music programme.
“Given the lack of response to the other three lots, we did engage with the market, and engaged extensively with the Beat Carnival as regards to them continuing to deliver the parade, which was in lot one.
“During those conversations, it became clear that the Beat had taken the decision that they would not be participating in the procurement, and would not be open to providing a service via an STA (single tender), which was a compliant route. We had no responses to competitive exercises.
“Since then officers have engaged with other suppliers, and we are confident we will deliver the parade on the 17th using a range of suppliers and that will be managed and coordinated by council officers.”
He added: “Via an STA we have engaged Tradfest to provide a city centre musical programme. This is a slightly different approach from previous years where we had a concert in Custom House Square on the 16th.
“The data suggests the attendance at that was quite low, so this city-wide programme is looking at how we can animate the city and provide a musical element to St Patrick’s Day, which will hopefully increase dwell-time for those attending the city for the parade in general.”
He said: “For lot four we had an open call which received no responses. As a result we are seeking permission to use the £50,000 funding for that to allow the Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish Language Festival) event in the city. Seachtain na Gaeilge was delivered very successfully last year with a significant level of attendance at the event itself.”
Mr Maskey said: “I am not against the recommendations, we need to get kicking on with this. But as a party we are extremely disappointed with how this has all panned out.
“I know from talking to one of the groups involved at the beginning, that there is a real disappointment around their expectations of how this would have rolled through, over more than two years. There was an excitement around the groups of how we could build a process and we could let them, along with our officers, organically develop.
“But to get to the stage where there are four lots, and only one expression of interest to get it over the line, that is dire. It tells you there is something wrong within the department, or with the visioning of how this should be taken forward.
Mr Maskey added: “Questions have been asked before about this throughout the calendar year, and yet now we are in crisis mode before it happens. We need earlier reports from officers about what is going on, because some of us might be able to assist.”
