REVEALED | Public forks out £1.5m to subsidise catering at Stormont

6 Aug

Cost of bill since 2020 described as ‘unconscionable’ by one MLA

Andrew Madden, Belfast Telegraph, August 6th, 2025

The public has subsidised catering at Stormont to the tune of more than £1.5m since 2020.

This includes almost £600,000 when the Assembly was not functioning due to the political stalemate.

People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll said it was wrong that meals for highly-paid politicians and civil servants are subsidised while public services are chronically short of cash, describing it as “unconscionable”.

The current salary for an MLA is £53,000.

In July this newspaper reported how MLAs’ expenses cost £1.9m last year, in addition to staffing costs of £9m.

The Assembly Commission, which runs services at Parliament Buildings, said catering is required for all users during operating hours, and for events and functions during and outside business hours.

When the cost of providing these services is more than the revenue generated from food and drink sales, the publicly-funded commission picks up the excess bill.

Figures obtained by the Belfast Telegraph show Stormont’s catering operating costs from the beginning of 2020 until the end of May this year.

The amount needed to cover the cost of catering above the revenue generated was £1,578,970.

The annual figure has fluctuated, from £351,250 in 2020 to £230,787 in 2024. It reached a peak in 2022 (£310,969).

Between February 3, 2022 and February 3, 2024, the Assembly was not functioning after the DUP pulled out in protest at the Irish Sea border.

Subsidy of nearly £600,000 when Stormont was suspended

While it wasn’t officially operating, the Assembly did sit on 27 occasions over this period, included for attempts to break the political deadlock.

Members of the public were also still able to avail of catering.

During this time the catering subsidy totalled £586,677.

Mr Carroll said: “It is unconscionable that hundreds of thousands of families who are struggling to put food on their own table are subsidising the meals of the highly-paid.

“The vast majority of workers across the north are not entitled to discounted lunches.

“Why should MLAs and senior civil servants have privileges that most people are denied?

“The continuation of this subsidy is not about protecting jobs under Stormont’s catering contract.

“If the Assembly Commission truly cared about job security and working conditions, they would end outsourcing and bring catering services back in house — but they refuse to.”

William Yarwood from right-wing pressure group the TaxPayers’ Alliance said the public will be furious meals are being subsidised while they face struggling services.

“Whether Westminster or Stormont, it’s not a good use of precious funds to keep funding the subsidies for these services,” he added.

The figures cover all catering costs, including for the Members’ Dining Room, the Blue Flax Restaurant, the basement canteen, the Members’ Bar, in addition to events.

Since 2017 the public has been allowed to dine in the luxurious 24-table oak-panelled Members’ Dining Room.

Its latest menu, covering July and August, includes a range of opulent dishes at surprisingly low prices, with three courses costing £29.50.

Starters include smoked Skeaghanore duck, chicory salad, pickled blackberries and a pear ketchup, and also marinated Atlantic prawns, pea panna cotta, horseradish crème fraîche and brown bread cracker crumbs.

For mains, diners can enjoy pressed Carnbrooke pork belly, sweetcorn puree, chipotle potatoes, pineapple and Granny Smith apple relish, drizzled with BBQ jus.

They could also opt for oven baked Keenan’s salmon, warm dill, Dijon mustard and Wilson’s potato salad, green beans and a watercress emulsion for the same price.

Desserts include strawberry and coconut brulee with desiccated strawberries, and milk chocolate and raspberry tart, Yellowman ice cream and fresh raspberries.

The Assembly Commission said: “The Assembly Commission requires that catering services for all building users, including the public, are provided during business hours and for events and functions both during business hours and outside of business hours.

“Under the Assembly Commission’s support services contract the cost of food provided in Parliament Buildings is borne by the contractor.

“Where the cost of providing catering services exceeds the revenue generated through food and drink sales, the Assembly Commission assumes the operating cost as per the contractual agreement.

“The Assembly Commission continues to work with the contractor to minimise costs where possible.

“As with all contracts, the Assembly Commission regularly reviews delivery of services to ensure maximum value for money.”

Sinn Féin, DUP and UUP have united to block plan to fix Lough Neagh

Tommy Greene, Irish Times, August 6th, 2025

‘We cannot continue to neglect the largest and perhaps most special contiguous ecosystem on the island of Ireland’

A question put to Sinn Féin Minister for the Economy at Stormont, Caoimhe Archibald, at the MacGill Summer School in Co Donegal last month will have caught the attention of few onlookers. Yet her response – arguing, between pre-scripted soundbites, that “what we have seen is a real collective approach from the Executive” on the clean-up of Lough Neagh – may have raised some eyebrows.

Archibald’s comment does not just say something about what has passed for official responses to the lough’s acute and worsening condition over the past 18 months. It also drives to the heart of the gap between this new-old Executive’s rhetoric and its delivery more widely.

When Northern Ireland’s power sharing institutions were restored at the beginning of 2024, some commentators and industry leaders were buoyed by a sense that, despite the limitations of these devolved governing arrangements, this historic Sinn Féin-led Executive might do things differently. Now, less than two years from the next round of Assembly elections, it looks just as inert and divided as any of Stormont’s previous iterations – and arguably more superficial.

For Sinn Féin, failure to see through clear advances on the cross-Border A5 road upgrade, Casement Park’s redevelopment or a minister’s bid to install Irish-language signage at Belfast’s new Grand Central transport hub is more likely to do the party political damage than continued neglect of the largest – and perhaps our most special – contiguous ecosystem on this island. Yet, having made the lough’s plight a central pillar of its programme for government, it is worth considering just how united and integrated an approach the Executive has applied to this stated “priority” issue.

The short answer, if a recent battle over the innocuously named Nutrients Action Programme (NAP) is anything to go by, would be very little. In the past number of months, Stormont’s agriculture and environment minister, Andrew Muir, has been straining to gain approval for what is essentially a second attempt at introducing measures to stem the largest source (contributing more than 60 per cent) of Lough Neagh’s most pressing contamination woes: its phosphorous and nitrogen inputs. Muir is finding himself even more isolated now than he was last year when the Executive held up and heavily diluted his “action plan” to tackle this bacterial pollution, while his colleagues would not initially provide a public endorsement for a strategy that remains under-resourced and largely unimplemented.

In the same breath as pledging to protect and even “save” Lough Neagh, every Executive formation other than Muir’s Alliance Party – Sinn Féin, the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party – voted down this year’s NAP, which comprises essentially moderate agricultural reforms. The culture war whipped up by some MLAs over these plans underscores one of the few settings – symbolic standoffs – this version of Stormont, like a number before it, appears comfortable with. If politicians cannot offer more than gesture politics and get to grips with this area of policy, every indication is that cyanobacterial (or “blue-green algae”) blooms will become a recurrent event for many summers to come.

Governance vacuum at heart of slow moving disaster

The disconnects concerning Lough Neagh are profound and a lack of joined-up thinking is not only evident at Stormont Castle. The governance vacuum the current and previous devolved governments – stretching back decades – have left behind are at the heart of a slow-moving disaster at Lough Neagh, which is no longer simply impacting its biodiversity but also the human communities who rely on this waterbody for their livelihoods and for sourcing half the North’s drinking water.

Most of the lough’s problems boil down to it being fundamentally a public asset and simultaneously not being treated as such. Yet few of the lough’s self-written stakeholder actors and even fewer politicians seem interested in altering this status quo, even as a third summer of cyanobacterial blooms begins, one pathology of both a “spiritual and moral crisis”.

And, meanwhile, the fallout from this recurrent pollution crisis is deepening. Just last month, the lough’s co-operative fishery – thought to be the largest of its kind in Europe – was forced to extend its ban on eel fishing to cover the entire 2025 season. Despite this being effectively the third consecutive season in which those fishing for the lough’s most lucrative catch have been unable to work its waters, with incomes having fallen by an estimated 60 per cent, there has still been no compensation or financial aid package for the fishers.

This governance vacuum, effectively amounting to a free-for-all at Lough Neagh, has long allowed all manner of opportunistic actors to grab resources and run.

While promised interventions stall on tackling pollution drivers, another key strand of any supposed recovery or rehabilitation has been outsourced to a series of private consultants and third-sector groups. This process concerning the lough’s future ownership and management has to date been largely disconnected from the mosaic of communities surrounding its 90-mile perimeter. It also appears increasingly to be being driven by three of Northern Ireland’s biggest landowners – Stormont’s Department of Agriculture, the Environment and Rural Affairs, the National Trust and the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury – in what has so far been a congested, confused and opaque process.

Arguably, the only serious co-ordinated achievement by these government and private actors over the past 18 months has been the development of a defensive – and, in some cases, sweeping – PR strategy that has largely deflected responsibility and accountability elsewhere for the cross-cutting response dilemma.

There are, however, still avenues and means through which to reimagine Lough Neagh, which has been bound up with questions of democracy since times predating partition. Yet a fundamental change of mentality is required, given concerns that tentative efforts to bring the public into shaping the waterbody’s future may be instrumentalised by various interested parties – backed by a mixture of public funds, private finance and philanthropic sources – for their own predetermined agendas.

Reflecting on what is at stake, citing “water we can’t really drink” and “fish [that] can’t live”, the lough shore resident and veteran campaigner Bernadette McAliskey summarised the state of affairs as follows: “We have exploited it and ignored it. And now, nature is – quite rightly – taking her revenge.”

Tommy Greene is a journalist and the author of Troubled Waters, which is due to be published by Merrion Press later this year

Troubles victims' champion facing big in-tray as long vacant role is finally filled

Suzanne Breen, Belfast Telegraph, August 6th, 2025

GROUPS WELCOME APPOINTMENT, BUT CAN JOHN MCVEY FULFIL EXPECTATIONS?

When Joe McVey becomes Northern Ireland's new commissioner for victims and survivors of the Troubles in the autumn he will be filling a position that has lain vacant for almost two years.

His predecessor Ian Jeffers left the role in 2023 to become chief executive of the cross-border charity Co-operation Ireland.

McVey will take up the post on October 6 for a period of four years. The salary is £79,237.

A former chief executive of Brain Injury Matters (NI), he was awarded an OBE for services to the voluntary sector.

He was appointed as a non-executive director of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust last year, and he has served eight years as a commissioner with the Equality Commission.

Mark Thompson of victims' group Relatives for Justice noted the length of time it had taken to appoint a victims' commissioner.

“I understand in a joint Executive it is difficult to find agreement on the issue,” he said.

“There is often a lot of toxicity created around victims' issues generally, particularly by political unionism.

“The onus now exists to prove that the position brings added value rather than just at times getting in the way of things.”

Mr Thompson added: “We had a former commissioner (Ian Jeffers) who came from the Prince's Trust — that's the prince who was commander-in-chief of the Parachute Regiment.

“And a previous commissioner, Judith Thompson, now sits on the external advisory group to advise the ICRIR (Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery), a body that the overwhelming majority of victims oppose.”

He praised former commissioner Bertha McDougall as “a person of integrity and principle who continued to work for all victims for a decade”.

Long overdue

Kenny Donaldson of victims' group SEFF congratulated Mr McVey on his appointment.

“It's long overdue as it will be 23 months since someone has been in place in the role when Joe starts in October,” he said.

“There is a significant in-tray awaiting him, but it will take him some time to get over his brief, and that needs to be understood.”

He said Mr McVey must advocate for a “fair and balanced outcome for legacy which delivers for all constituencies of victims/survivors”.

He needed to work on reparation for the bereaved and “progressing policy around the teaching of 'The Troubles' as part of the education curriculum, as well as “continuing to press for good outcomes and deliverables across the regional trauma network”.

Mr Donaldson said: “We would also implore the new commissioner to follow on from previous work of ensuring that peripheral-based victims/survivors are no longer disadvantaged. The postcode lottery in terms of service provision must cease.

“He must also adopt a robust approach with both the UK and Irish states, as well as the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly, in the provision of services and in the handling of legacy.”

He added: “For our part, we will seek to work constructively with the new commissioner, there will undoubtedly be times when (his) policy will not necessarily mirror SEFF's position, and vice-versa.

“But if we focus on the areas of common agreement then outcomes for victims/survivors should improve.”

Victims pensions

Wave Trauma Centre described it as “a long overdue appointment”. A spokesperson said: “Wave wishes Commissioner McVey well in this challenging role and look forward to engaging with him.

“Victims and survivors need a strong independent voice who will represent their interests, not least at the highest levels of government.”

DUP MLA Brian Kingston said: “We welcome the appointment of Joe McVey and wish him well in his new role. The DUP has long advocated to ensure resources are available to provide vital high-quality and essential trauma-informed services.

“The victims' pension was a significant step forward for victims, secured despite opposition from some quarters.

“The commissioner has an important role in holding this process to account and seeking to improve the time it can take for applications to be processed. There will also be continued work required on additional support for the bereaved.”

SDLP Mid Ulster councillor Denise Johnston said: “I am pleased that at last this position has been filled and that Joe McVey has been appointed to safeguard and look after the interests of our victims and survivors.

“The delay in filling this role suggests to me that victims and survivors are not high on the Executive's list of priorities.

“The role the DUP have played in the obstruction of the inquest process and Sinn Féin's procrastination over a pension for those injured as a result of the Troubles should not be forgotten.”

Govts feared IRA Army Council members were to be named

Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, August 6th, 2025

The British and Irish Governments were dismayed when they learnt that an 'independent' body they'd set up to monitor paramilitarism was considering publicly naming every member of the IRA Army Council.

The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) was established by the two governments in 2004 in an attempt to persuade unionism to stick with the Good Friday Agreement despite the IRA's refusal to fully decommission years after the Good Friday Agreement.

The body issued regular reports, based on intelligence and other information, about what was going on within loyalist and republican paramilitaries.

Among files declassified at The National Archives in Kew, there is a confidential March 19, 2004 Downing Street memo which recorded a meeting with senior Irish officials.

The memo said that Tim Dalton, the top official at the Irish Department of Justice, “was concerned that the IMC wanted to name the members of the IRA PAC [Provisional Army Council].All agreed that this would be a bad idea.”

Summarising the situation more broadly, Matthew Rycroft in Downing Street said the meeting showed that “the Irish are on a different track from the Prime Minister, more interested in managing the process with republicans than bringing things to a head”.

Other documents show that the two governments had considerable knowledge of what the IMC was going to be saying, and they were keen to pressurise it into saying what was helpful to what they wanted to achieve.

A quiet summer the priority

The same day as the meeting of British and Irish officials, Jonathan Powell messaged the Prime Minister to say the Irish Government wanted “to manage the process and keep pressing republicans to move forward and try to manoeuvre to get another quiet summer.

“Their proposal is that we get the IMC to report saying that the [Bobby] Tohill abduction was carried out by the IRA but not to propose any specific punishment for Sinn Fein.

“Instead it should say that if the IRA has not ceased all activity by the time of their next report, in October, they will not believe there is any serious prospect of the IRA ending its paramilitary campaign....we would also need to make progress on policing since it is impossible for SF to give up punishment beatings for the long term without that.”

He went on to say: “If the IMC report does recommend any action we will have a problem. [Someone, seemingly the PM, has written 'why?' in the margin] I doubt the Irish would support exclusion of SF from the review, nor is it obvious what progress we could make in such circumstances.

“You should also be aware that the IMC is considering publishing the names of the members of the PAC. We are advising them against.”

Almost a year earlier, a senior NIO official implied that at that point Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were members of the Army Council.

In another file which has been opened at Kew NIO associate political director David Cooke said in May 2003 while considering a truth body: “Unclear who would cooperate and who would not. Would Adams and McGuinness? Even if they did, would other PAC members?”

Adams has always denied he was ever a member of the IRA.

‘Urgent investment needed in play spaces’

Clodagh Traynor, Irish News, August 8th, 2025

A CHARITY dedicated to the development and promotion of young people’s play has called for “urgent investment” in places to play across the north.

PlayBoard NI has highlighted the need for further development of “inclusive, accessible, and high-quality play spaces”.

Playday is a campaign and annual celebration that highlights the importance of play in children’s lives and is traditionally held on the first Wednesday in August.

This year’s Playday theme highlights the essential role that playful spaces have in supporting children and young people’s health, happiness, and development.

Outdoor play brings wide-ranging benefits including improving physical activity levels, mental health, social development, and community connection.

The charity says that unequal access to playful outdoor spaces “continues to limit these opportunities for many families and communities”.

The campaign is calling for a “coordinated, cross-departmental strategy that brings together health, education, planning, and community development”.

This includes making play spaces more inclusive and available in every community, building play into local planning and housing strategies, and improving safe walking and cycling routes to parks and green areas.

PlayBoard NI has also called to support community-led play projects and street play, to open up school grounds for use outside school hours, and to ensure a legal commitment to play access is included in future policy and planning decisions.

Alan Herron, Chief Executive Officer of Playboard NI, said play spaces are a “vital” part of young people’s development.

“Play is not a luxury – it’s a fundamental right. We need a long-term, joined-up approach that ensures every child, no matter where they live or what their ability, has a safe and inspiring place to play – not just this summer, but all year round,” he said.

“Although there have been some positive steps, access to safe, well-maintained outdoor spaces remains uneven across Northern Ireland.

“Public transport remains inadequate in many rural areas, maintenance budgets are stretched, and children with disabilities continue to face barriers to participation.”

PSNI on road safety duties halves in a decade

Chief Superintendent Sam Donaldson said the force has a ‘problem’ in terms of how it resources road safety

By Jonathan McCambridge, PA. Irish News, August 6th, 2025

The number of police officers and staff dealing with road safety in Northern Ireland has been cut in half in a decade, a senior officer has said.

Chief Superintendent Sam Donaldson said the force has a “problem” in terms of how it resources issues such as speeding motorists and the detection of drink or drug driving.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has regularly raised concerns about the PSNI budget and the need for more officers to be recruited.

Mr Donaldson said: “The truth is we don’t have enough resources.

“I would like to have more officers and more staff to deploy to road safety duties.

“About 10 years ago there were nearly 300 involved, that’s police and staff, we are down to around half of that now.

“With half the resources, that means half the deployments, half the detections, half the road safety.

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind we have got a problem here in terms of the amount of resources the organisation has.

“We have also got a problem in terms of the resources being allocated to road safety.”

Mr Donaldson said there are many different demands on the PSNI budget, including public disorder.

He added: “What inevitably happens as well is, if road policing officers are being redeployed for the disorder in Ballymena, Portadown, places like that, then that again is even less officers being deployed from a road safety perspective.

“There is absolutely an issue there.

“Our vision is, the Chief Constable’s vision, is we get properly funded and we recruit and we get more people into the police service.

“Our vision is absolutely to start to reinvest again from a road safety perspective and have more police officers, have more staff and have more technology because we need money to invest in technology such as our laser devices and our other detection equipment.

“All that has to happen.”

Road safety vans funded from fixed penalty notices

The speeding camera vans which can be sited at roads across Northern Ireland are operated by the Northern Ireland Road Safety Partnership, which includes the PSNI, but which is funded by the fixed penalty notices issued to motorists, rather than from the police budget.

However, PSNI officers are also deployed on road safety duties and Mr Donaldson said this is where there is a “capacity issue”.

He said: “The reality is we have less and less police officers now.

“Therefore we have less and less of an opportunity to deploy people on the ground using the laser, what some people call the hairdryer, for speed detection.

“Sadly, because of the capacity in PSNI, we have less opportunity to do that.

“But the vans, they have been going for about 20 years now, last year they made more detections than ever before.”

Rats the size of cats - the rising cost of under investment in infrastructure

David Parnell, Belfast Telegraph, August 5th, 2025

In more than 20 years of pest control, I thought I'd seen it all. But when I saw the images of a 22-inch rat found in a house in Redcar, Yorkshire, even I was taken aback.

In all my years, I've never seen anything quite like this. But it's not just a one-off — the rats are getting bigger, bolder and harder to deal with.

What used to be a couple of callouts a month for rats inside homes has now surged to eight to 10 a week. The vast majority of these infestations trace back to our neglected drainage systems. The rodents aren't just passing through — they're coming up from the sewers and moving in. I've had cases where rats have climbed two storeys up the inside of a cast-iron drainpipe, only to emerge in someone's toilet bowl.

Rats are brilliant climbers. They're highly adaptable, intelligent, agile and opportunistic. And they're getting larger — partly due to genetics (we share a large percentage of the same genetic make-up as rodents, believe it or not), some because they gorge on the high-fat takeaway waste we throw around so carelessly.

I once dealt with a colony I estimated at over 300 rats. The largest rat I've ever personally caught was 20 inches long — but now we're seeing 22 inches, and who knows what's next?

The UK has created a perfect storm for rats: poor waste management, exploding takeaway culture, weak sewer infrastructure and water companies failing to maintain ageing systems. Add to that a society that's seemingly forgotten the basics of hygiene and waste disposal, and the result is a rodent crisis on a scale I've never seen before.

People might not realise it, but we're far worse at handling our waste than we used to be. I get called out more and more to HMOs (houses in multiple occupation) and council estates where bags of rubbish are simply tossed outside, or left to rot. You cannot expect to keep rats out when you're essentially laying out a buffet for them.

I've seen some truly horrifying cases. In one north London property, a woman reported a dead rat in her lounge. When I arrived, there were holes in the floor, droppings everywhere and two live rats scurrying across the kitchen worktop. There were three bin bags full of waste in the kitchen, and rats bolted from them as I moved them. Under the stairs, there was more rat droppings and chewed wiring. The tenant suspected rodent damage had cut her electrics. I believe it. The property could have been condemned on the spot.

And what's worse is how ill-equipped we are to fight the problem. We're restricted in how we can use rodenticides. Because of overuse and genetic evolution, many rats are now resistant. So pest controllers like me must follow strict orders — identifying food sources, shelters and access routes before we even think about poison. Rodenticides are a last resort, and even then only allowed for a limited time and in specific circumstances.

The real issue is that we're not dealing with the root causes. Water companies need to take responsibility for defective drainage systems — rats can't infest homes in such numbers without a breach somewhere. Councils, too, are struggling. Many no longer run their own pest control departments. That means private operators are stretched thin, and the public is left footing the bill.

And the public needs to wake up. Stop throwing waste from car windows and other places. Clean up after your barbecues. Recycle properly — a greasy pizza box isn't recyclable, and it attracts rats.

I give talks in local communities to try to raise awareness. I do it all for free, because education is the only long-term answer. You'd be amazed at how many people think it's fine to cater for a rat. One household I went into regularly had a rat coming in, and they used to feed it - “it's one of God's creatures”, they say. It's a bit like Michael Jackson's Ben, and I get that.

We can fix this — but not if we carry on as we are. When we build new homes, we need to think harder about how waste will be managed. When people see rats, they need to ask: why is it here? What food source is it finding? And more importantly, what can I do to stop it?

I'll be 70 next year. I've seen a lot in this job. But never have I seen rats this big, in these numbers, in places so deeply entwined with our lives. Unless something changes — and soon — we're going to see much, much worse.

David Parnell is a pest controller from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.

REVEALED | Public forks out £1.5m to subsidise catering at Stormont

Cost of bill since 2020 described as ‘unconscionable’ by People Before Profit MLA, Gerry Carroll