Sinn Fein minister slammed for halting naming of benefit cheats

Sammy Wilson – who was in charge of the Province’s spending from 2009 to 2013 – also added that the move is keeping with Sinn Fein’s record of “covering up for criminals”.

He was responding to news that Deirdre Hargey, the newly-installed Sinn Fein minister for communities (in charge of benefits), had ordered an end to the well-established practice of naming convicted welfare fraudsters.

For years it has been the case that the Stormont government will issue press releases following successful prosecutions for false claims of Housing Benefit, Jobseekers’ Allowance, disability benefits, and more.

This was often the media’s only means of finding out about such fraudsters, since the limited number of court reporters in the Province largely concentrate on violent crime and other major offences against the person.

However, in a story first broken by the Irish News on Tuesday, minister Hargey declared that it is “not required” of her to publish the names, and she has deemed it is “not necessary” any more.

Her statement said she wanted instead to publish statistics “in a more strategic way to reflect the wide range of work undertaken in this area”.

Sinn Fein now controls the Department for Communities and the Department of Finance (as well as the post of deputy first minister).

Mr Wilson, the MP for East Antrim, told the News Letter: “It’s totally bizarre – though probably not out of character given Sinn Fein have been covering up for criminals for years and years. Maybe it’s just part of the DNA of Sinn Fein, that you do not reveal the names of people who you know to be involved in criminal activity.”

He went on to add: “The one deterrent – and I know it’s not a deterrent for everyone – when it comes to fraud is to be named and shamed. You’d expect them to be identified and then to bear the repercussions of what they’ve done.”

He said the announcement comes at a time when Conor Murphy [the finance minister] “has been crying about not having enough money”, adding that minister Hargey’s decision “may well encourage people to defraud the public purse”.

If he had been finance minister, and a similar announcement had been made by one of his Executive colleagues, Mr Wilson said “I’d be saying to them that if you’re as cavalier with your budget as that, that you actually don’t mind defrauding it... don’t be coming knocking on my door every time you run short of cash”.

He added that Sinn Fein had pressed strongly for all RHI recipients to be named, regardless of whether they were claiming legitimately or not, and some “had shadows cast over their honesty” as a result – and yet now Sinn Fein are essentially telling benefit cheats “we don’t want the public to know who you are”.

He concluded: “The general public will find it very difficult to understand why a minister would make such a decision... I am sure this is not what the public meant when they said they wanted to see the Assembly up and running... that one of the first things a minister would do is say ‘How can I find a way of protecting people who cheat on the public purse’?”

The News Letter put Mr Wilson’s points to the department, but it simply sent out the same statement it issued to the Irish News the previous day, which did not address anything he had said.