Unionists ridicule SDLP call to axe cash for council

Unionists have rounded on an SDLP councillor after he made an 'ill-thought out' demand for his own ratepayers to be stopped from receiving a massive cash grant.
Declan O'LoanDeclan O'Loan
Declan O'Loan

Declan O’Loan, the sole SDLP member of Mid and East Antrim council, said that the EU should pull the plug on his council’s efforts to obtain a multi-million pound slab of cross-community cash, on the grounds that no nationalists or republicans have been chosen to supervise how the funding is handled.

The council this week appointed its six-strong “partnership” board, with the aim of administering £2.6m in Peace IV funding from the EU which it expects to get.

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Of the six, three are DUP councillors, two UUP, and one TUV - reflecting the fact that these are the three largest parties on the council (see below).

Councillor O’Loan, representing Ballymena, said in a statement that because the cash is designed to improve cross-community relations, this “cannot be done by bringing only a unionist perspective to decisions on the funding”.

He said he will write to the EU body in charge, demanding that the council be forced to “create a politically broad partnership, or else lose the funding”.

The six councillors were appointed to the board using the d’Hondt method - the same system which is embraced by the SDLP when apportioning out ministerial positions in the Stormont Executive, based on how many MLAs each party has.

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TUV group leader on the council Timothy Gaston said: “After the recent job losses in Ballymena, Declan should be in no position to be turning away any funding.

“I think it’s ill-thought out, this move he’s trying to play. I’d advise councillor O’Loan to think of his options clearly. He’s one man on the council.”

Gregg McKeen, DUP group leader, said: “D’Hondt is either the recognised method, or you go for a free for all! The SDLP fought for this, to implement it in Stormont.”

He likened it to a child who brings a ball to a playground to start a game.

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“He hasn’t got what he wanted,” said councillor McKeen. “And now he’s decided to make everybody else suffer by taking the ball and running.”

A spokesman for council headquarters stated simply that the same method “has previously been used by council under the provisions of the Local Government Act”.

The EU cash is managed by the Special EU Programmes Body, based in Belfast. It has not yet been handed over, and councils are still in the process of drawing up applications.

Details of what exactly the Peace projects are, and where other EU cash in the Province actually goes, is available here.

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Councillor O’Loan himself responded: “The SDLP don’t take an absolutist position in terms of using d’Hondt in every circumstance.

“Different situations require a different solution.”

In this case he said it was “absolutely basic” to make sure there was some kind of cross-community mix on the board.

COUNCIL SPLIT:

Mid and East Antrim Borough Council has 40 council seats altogether.

Of these, the DUP hold 16, the UUP hold nine, and the TUV are the third-largest party with four.

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Meanwhile, the Alliance Party have three seats, Sinn Fein have three, UKIP have two, and the SDLP have just one (there are also two independents ).

The council area ranks second in the Province in the proprtion of residents who are, or were raised as, Protestant.

Just under 73 per cent said they fell into this category in the 2011 Census (just below North Down and Ards, where the figure was 75 per cent).