Opinion

Newton Emerson: Chuckle Brothers politics means 'to me, to you' rates rises

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

'To me, to you' Chuckle Brothers politics at Belfast City Council means a £500,000 bonfire diversionary scheme - and rates rises. Picture by Alan Lewis/Photopress
'To me, to you' Chuckle Brothers politics at Belfast City Council means a £500,000 bonfire diversionary scheme - and rates rises. Picture by Alan Lewis/Photopress 'To me, to you' Chuckle Brothers politics at Belfast City Council means a £500,000 bonfire diversionary scheme - and rates rises. Picture by Alan Lewis/Photopress

THE Chuckle Brothers was a perfect nickname for the launch of DUP-Sinn Féin government - not because of the chuckling, which was always rare and strange, but because of the catchphrase "to me, to you", which has only become more apt.

Stormont's £80 million Social Investment Fund (SIF) has provided the textbook illustration of how both parties bury the hatchet by dividing the spoils.

Last November, following high-profile scandals over what the SDLP described as a "slush fund" for "favoured groups", the Audit Office found some recipients had been selected without competition or documentation and concluded "the design of SIF meant conflicts of interest were inevitable".

Yet this approach is still endorsed straight from the top. The Northern Ireland Office chipped another £25m into SIF in November 2017, eight months after the Audit Office investigation began, as part of the first full Stormont budget imposed since devolution collapsed - a budget otherwise as anodyne as possible to avoid looking like direct rule.

In retrospect, knowing a DUP-Sinn Féin deal was almost reached three months later, that extra cash looks like an admission of how essential such greasing of the wheels is to the political process.

No wonder qualms are set aside for such excellent value for money - £25m is just a quarter of one per cent of Stormont's annual budget.

A similar culture of "to me, to you" is now coming to light at Belfast City Council.

This week the DUP, Sinn Féin and the Progressive Unionist Party voted to put the rates up by an additional 0.3 per cent to fund a £500,000 bonfire diversion scheme.

This will be the second year the scheme has run - last year it spent £400,000.

It is separate to the council's bonfire management funding, which offers cash inducements to make bonfires less polluting and offensive.

The diversion scheme funds "area-based festivals" during bonfire season, officially to give young people something else to do.

Alliance has denounced this as another SIF-style carve up, noting that none of last year's money was spent in east Belfast, where most bonfire problems occur, while the West Belfast Festival and a west Belfast unionist community group received a nice round £100,000 each.

These sums are trivial compared to other council schemes facing similar accusations.

Last February, the DUP and Sinn Féin used a behind-closed-doors procedure to turn a £4m Social Outcomes fund for Belfast city centre into a Community Tourism fund for east and west Belfast, benefitting nine projects.

That in turn is dwarfed by the £27m Belfast Investment Fund and £4m Local Investment Fund, both of which were criticised by the Audit Office in 2017.

Referring to these funds, Alliance said: "In an area of the city where one party dominated, it had considerable control over the funding pot.

"If that party doesn't like certain community groups, then those groups could potentially experience difficulty when it comes to council funding."

What is new about the bonfire diversionary scheme is its explicit link to a local tax rise.

DUP and Sinn Féin slush funds to date have either been cobbled together from existing pots of cash or have arrived as extra money from Westminster. Now, Belfast's ratepayers will be billed clearly and directly.

This is something of a watershed for political accountability in Northern Ireland.

Alliance's motion this week against the bonfire scheme was a transparent attempt to make its funding an electoral issue, by proposing the money be spent on alleviating poverty instead.

The DUP and Sinn Féin were embarrassed enough to come out and defend the scheme, with the DUP saying it contributed to a relatively peaceful summer last year and Sinn Féin saying the West Belfast Festival has been diverting people from internment bonfires for decades.

Despite the growing political crises of the past two years, it is a fact that we have had a run of three quiet marching seasons since the Ardoyne parade was resolved in 2016 - a period of calm unprecedented since the 1960s.

Perhaps the most awkward question raised by the bonfire diversionary scheme is whether ratepayers, once forced to consider the issue, might take the same view as the NIO: that for all its faults it is a price worth paying for functioning politics and a quiet life.

If April's new rates bills are followed by a healthy Sinn Féin and DUP vote in May's council elections, as seems certain, how else can that be interpreted but as a democratic endorsement of Chuckle Brothers 'social investment'?

newton@irishnews.com