Northern Ireland

Tougher decisions ahead for communities minister

Sinn Féin's Deirdre Hargey and Carál Ní Chuilín at a protest outside Belfast City Hall in 2018. Picture by Cliff Donaldson
Sinn Féin's Deirdre Hargey and Carál Ní Chuilín at a protest outside Belfast City Hall in 2018. Picture by Cliff Donaldson Sinn Féin's Deirdre Hargey and Carál Ní Chuilín at a protest outside Belfast City Hall in 2018. Picture by Cliff Donaldson

TWO Sinn Féin representatives have held the communities minister post in the six months since devolution returned.

Deirdre Hargey was the first to take on the role, appointed just weeks after being chosen by Sinn Féin to replace the outgoing Máirtín Ó Muilleoir as the party's South Belfast MLA.

Last month Ms Hargey announced she was temporarily stepping aside due to illness which needed surgery in hospital and would "require time to properly recover".

In the meantime, she has been replaced by North Belfast MLA and former culture, arts and leisure minister Carál Ní Chuilín.

The Department for Communities (DfC) has a broad remit, from welfare payments and social housing to funding for sport and the arts sector.

Ms Hargey's co-option and appointment as minister was a rapid rise through the ranks, but she has proven herself to be a capable public representative in previous roles.

She was Sinn Féin's Belfast City Council group leader, and as lord mayor in 2018, she fronted the local authority's response to the problems caused by the Primark fire.

Ms Hargey, who celebrated her 40th birthday in April, has been considered one of most pro-active ministers.

A signal of intent came early on when she announced an extension of welfare mitigations to the so-called bedroom tax, which was agreed as part of the New Decade, New Approach deal to restore Stormont.

"We have a responsibility to protect the poorest and most vulnerable in society," she said at the time.

The minister also ordered her department to stop publishing the names of people convicted of benefit fraud. Rights campaigners welcomed this change to a "dehumanising narrative", although critics said it gave the "wrong message to benefit cheats".

As the coronavirus pandemic escalated, she made a flurry of announcements to assist vulnerable people during the crisis.

Among them were councils receiving a £1.5m funding pot to assist vulnerable people, a weekly food parcel service and moves made to prevent housing tenants being evicted during the pandemic.

Ms Hargey came under some pressure to respond to redundancies of council staff, but she later clarified that furloughing was available and set up a £20.3m support package for local authorities.

One novel decision was the minister donating £10,000 from her department to a GoFundMe page supporting struggling artists and performers. While well-intentioned, it is perhaps not the best way to ensure public funds are spent transparently and with adequate public scrutiny.

Of course, handing out the vast sums of government funding to alleviate the Covid-19 crisis will be the easier part of the job. As the money dries up and concerns grow over the pandemic's long-term economic impact, tougher decisions are yet to come.

Top of the list is the troubled Casement Park redevelopment project. While a decision on planning approval lies with infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon, DfC is the sponsoring department.

Ms Hargey has been clear in her commitment to the GAA stadium plan, with the west Belfast sports ground the setting for one of her first photo calls as minister.

However, there is an unresolved £33m funding gap as the estimated cost of the long-delayed project has ballooned to £110m.

Stormont had already pledged around £62m with the GAA providing £15m, but the two sides have yet to agree how to make up the shortfall.

DfC has said this is the subject of "ongoing discussions" between it, finance minister Conor Murphy and the GAA.

Ms Ní Chuilín was minister for the department in charge of the Casement project when it ran into problems, including safety concerns and its planning approval being quashed in a legal challenge.

With her return to the executive, Ms Ní Chuilín has an opportunity to personally deliver on her pledge during her previous ministerial tenure to have Casement Park redeveloped.

But with Stormont's nine departments all vying for resources, the arts and sport-centric remit of DfC's portfolio might find itself further down the list of priorities – making future decisions a more difficult task.