LESSONS from the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal have still not been learned, civil service chiefs have admitted in response to a new report.
That applies to the report itself. In May, head of the civil service Jayne Brady commissioned consultants PwC to investigate a whistleblowing scandal at the Department of Agriculture, where a vet had been bullied out of her job and then hounded through the courts, running up a £2 million bill.
The report has now been appeared, six months late. Senior civil servants tried to stop it being published at all. PwC has revealed it received scant cooperation – nobody was interviewed, key individuals did not supply information, the civil service chose what documents to provide and minutes of meetings were not kept. Civil servants also ordered deletions from PwC’s final draft.
No individual is named in the report, despite all names being in the public domain. No disciplinary action is mentioned in the civil service’s 33-point “action plan” response.
Brady was less than a year in post when she commissioned the report, declaring it a “personal priority” to address the whistleblowing scandal.
The promise of a new broom has ended with the same old brush-off.
**
Belfast City Council has voted to increase rates by 8 per cent – or 7.99 per cent to be exact. Other councils will have to do likewise to meet inflationary pressures and give cost-of-living increases to their staff. For the same reasons, Stormont may have to put up its half of rates bills by up to 10 per cent, according to Ulster University economist Esmond Birnie.
That would all add up to an extra £1.73 per week on the average household bill. Does this prospect really justify the wailing and gnashing of teeth it has provoked?
For those who would struggle with such a sum, rebates and benefits are available. But most would not struggle, while anyone with a cost-of-living increase would be in the same position they were before.
The convoluted objections of people who simply do not want to put their hand in their pocket is oddly reminiscent of General de Gaulle’s lament about France: “How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?”
Particularly cheesy is the classic “I work hard for my money.”
So what? That is not how taxation is assessed.
**
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson had a rare chance to ask a question at prime minister’s question time. He used it to appeal for freedom of religion, citing the case of a woman charged with breaching a public protection order outside a Birmingham abortion clinic. DUP MPs had held a meeting with the women in Westminster the day before.
It seems strange that the DUP leader would squander a timely and precious opportunity to ask about a protocol deal. Perhaps desperate distraction and buttering up the gospel halls is about a protocol deal.
**
Council plans to upgrade the North Down coastal path into a greenway have proved so contentious they may have to be shelved. The BBC has reported this as a conflict between walkers and cyclists on the Bangor to Donaghadee section of the route. However, there is a more interesting story to be told about the Holywood to Helen’s Bay section, home to some of the wealthiest and best-connected people in Northern Ireland, where the path remains mysteriously underdeveloped and this fact receives strangely little attention.
Last year, residents tried objecting to a new gate off the path into the Ulster Folk Museum by claiming it would cause traffic congestion, obliging council planners to remind them the path is not open to cars. In a further mystery, unlawful ‘private road’ and ‘residents only’ signs have been known to appear on public roads and rights of way, without attracting the usual official zeal to remove them.
**
A new transport plan for Dublin has been ridiculed for giving Luas line extension timescales of over 20 years.
Belfast is in no position to laugh while its new north-south Glider lane is scheduled to take five years, despite most of it being a bus lane already. With the Glider system already established, pretty much all there is to do for a new route is to re-align junctions and upgrade bus stops, yet it will still inevitably run years overdue.
There has been some excitement in the north west after Ireland’s transport minister, Eamon Ryan, told the Dáil he has discussed rebuilding the old railway line from Portadown to Derry as part of the All-Ireland Strategic Rail Review. How long would that take, even if a decision was officially taken to build it?
**
Speaking at an ecumenical service in St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin said the Churches should offer help with a Troubles legacy process.
Let us hope he ran this idea past the cathedral authorities. In a 2017 Irish News article I suggested the grim car park surrounding St Anne’s would make an ideal landscaped garden for a Troubles memorial. The cathedral’s press office contacted me at once to advise that its parking spaces are sacred.
