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Ministerial cars used 600 times since Stormont suspension

Hundreds of journeys of varying lengths were taken in a six month period
Hundreds of journeys of varying lengths were taken in a six month period Hundreds of journeys of varying lengths were taken in a six month period

MINISTERIAL cars have been used 600 times since Stormont was suspended - including a 300 mile round trip.

Hundreds of journeys were taken in a six month period, even though the executive was not functioning.

Executive departments said the officials used the cars when it made sense.

All but one of nine departments - finance - used cars to transport civil servants on official business.

Some trips involved taking civil servants from one building to another inside Stormont estate.

In the longest trip, a car was sent back and forth between Belfast and Derry to collect a civil servant, clocking up 300 miles.

Other journeys included taking officials from the Department of Education to Dublin, waiting for them and bringing them back again.

SDLP assembly member John Dallat said vehicles should have been "mothballed" when the election was called.

"I think there has to be greater accountability because we can't simply be looking at cost-saving exercises, departments, and making people redundant and at the same time having this fleet of luxury top-of-the-range Skodas swanning around the country and indeed adding enormous mileage to a trip," he told the BBC.

NIPSA official Bumper Graham said it was best to make use of the cars.

"Otherwise you would have sacked the drivers, and they would have been the ones who paid the rice for the political inertia that is a responsibility of the MLAs," he said.