IT is not just Stormont that has a Social Investment Fund. Belfast City Council runs the Belfast Investment Fund and associated Local Investment Fund, with a combined pot of £31 million over three years for ‘community projects’. Alliance has claimed the council funds “aren’t advertised properly in any meaningful way”, leaving “those in the know in prime position to apply and secure huge sums of money.” Current applicants include two community groups in east Belfast run by UDA boss Jimmy Birch, an associate of Dee Stitt. Both men are also on the board of Stormont-funded Charter NI. The similarities do not end there - Alliance has asked the council to advertise and externally audit its funds but this has been voted down by Sinn Féin, the DUP and the UUP. At least the £80m Social Investment Fund is only a tiny fraction of Stormont’s budget. The community project element of the Belfast funds is 7.5 per cent of the council’s annual spending - as much as it devotes to waste disposal or economic development.
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The Department for the Economy has told this newspaper that its probe into the botched Renewable Heat Incentive scheme may never be made public. Only once the department has investigated why shortcomings went unnoticed will it decide if its conclusions should be published. Meanwhile, DUP economy minister Simon Hamilton has told the assembly he is “absolutely adamant” that criminal proceedings should be brought “where there is proof and evidence of abuse of the scheme”. How could abuse be proved without transparency on the shortcomings? No wonder the PSNI is not investigating any fraud in relation to RHI. It is safe to assume that nobody will or indeed can be prosecuted for availing of rules so lax that 99.4 per cent of applicants were accepted on the spot.
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When Northern Ireland attorney general John Larkin referred two failed legal challenges against Brexit for appeal to the UK Supreme Court, it might have looked like he was doing the Belfast plaintiffs a favour. In fact he wanted to firmly debunk them, as his testimony in London this week made clear. One of those plaintiffs, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, is now demanding to know how Larkin can act against the democratic wishes of Northern Ireland and the position of the first ministers, who appoint him. However, the attorney general is free to represent the public interest as he sees fit - and in any case, the executive has no common position on Brexit. A better question is why the human rights groups who funded Eastwood’s case did not ask Mike Nesbitt, alone of all Stormont’s pro-Remain party leaders, to join them. Should this not have been the ultimate example of ‘vote Colum, get Mike’?
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It has emerged that Gerry Adams has not begun legal proceedings against the BBC, four months after strongly implying he would do so. The Sinn Féin president had categorically denied claims in a September edition of Spotlight that he sanctioned the 2006 murder of informant Denis Donaldson. While the BBC has stood over its journalism, the findings of this particular programme are not widely regarded as conclusive. Most people could expect a defamation settlement under such circumstances. Adams’s failure to pursue one reflects not guilt but an accumulated lifetime of reasons why he cannot ever put himself under cross-examination. In short, it may be concluded that he has no reputation worth the risk of defending. How long is this sustainable for any party leader?
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Last month, the Taoiseach’s all-Ireland Brexit forum received a written submission from Graham Keddie, managing director of Belfast International Airport. In it, Keddie demanded that Tourism Ireland do more to promote his Crumlin-based aviation and food court facility as “the gateway not only to Northern Ireland, but to Ireland as a whole.” While southerners assumed this was directed at Dublin, northerners wondered if it had more to do with Brian Ambrose, chair of the cross-border tourism quango, who also happens to be chief executive of Belfast City Airport, a car park monopoly and landing strip currently branded after a thirsty footballer. If so, things are about to get even more cramped in business class. The DUP has just nominated Keddie to the board of Tourism Ireland.
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With no fanfare whatsoever, the Executive Office has appointed the Civic Advisory Panel, fulfilling a promise under the Fresh Start agreement. The six-person panel is the official heir to the Civic Forum, the 60-person Stormont second chamber inserted into the Good Friday Agreement at the behest of the Women’s Coalition. That unelected House of Lords and Ladies last met in 2002. Sinn Féin has occasionally mentioned it since as an “outstanding commitment” but that is presumably now addressed. Also consigned forever to the footnotes of history is the Civil Society Network, launched last October to try and bounce itself into any agreement as a third-sector fait accompli. All that remains of these frantic labours is one lingering question. What is the difference between civil and civic?
newton@irishnews.com