DUP denies vote against new Dungiven leisure centre was sectarian

The roughly £2.5m new scheme in Dungiven, Co Londonderry, was approved by Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council on Tuesday night.

It followed the decision of the Department for Culture, Leisure and Sport (DCAL) to make extra funding available to the council, after a shortfall emerged late last year.

However, the Sinn Fein minister in charge – Caral Ni Chuilin – has been asked to demonstrate that this additional funding from her department will not mean that other projects elsewhere in Northern Ireland will now be deprived of cash as a result.

The scheme has been many years in the making.

Originally slated to cost several million pounds, unionists had voiced opposition to those plans and in July 2014 Sinn Fein councillor Sean McGlinchey blamed lack of progress on “a sectarian attitude from unionist councillors against Dungiven”.

According to the last census, more than 95 per cent of the 3,288 residents of Dungiven are either Catholic or from a Catholic background.

The plans were later scaled down and on Tuesday night, all parties on the council voted in favour of a £2.84m newly built centre to replace the town’s existing facility – except the DUP, which abstained.

The decision followed DCAL’s offer of £350,000-worth in sports funding for the borough.

DUP councillor Trevor Clarke said while his party had not stood in the way of the scheme during the vote, it abstained because councillors were still not satisfied with some aspects of the scheme’s finances.

When it comes to the claim of unionist sectarianism over the project, he said: “I think that was nonsense.”

He branded it a “smokescreen” which “was unhelpful through the process of considering the relevant facts”.

The original scheme had been “entirely disproportionate to the population scale and the need of that particular area”, he said.

A new plan for a roughly £2.5m scheme, funded by DCAL, was then put out to tender – but he added that in December 2015 it emerged this would be £339,000 more expensive than expected, with the council reluctant to dip into a community fund to pay the difference.

DCAL has said this £339,000 sum will now be covered by the council, but councillor Clarke said the £350,000 from the department “effectively offsets the shortfall”.

He said the party’s concerns about the scheme had been purely practical, adding: “I know the scheme is important to representatives of the Dungiven area, but there are six other electoral areas within the new borough which have equally valid claims in terms of advancing facilities for the local public.”

UUP councillor William McCandless said it “vindicated” councillors’ decision to press DCAL for more cash, while Ms Ni Chuilin herself hailed it as “a great day for Dungiven”, and on Wednesday paid a visit to the town.

DUP East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell said he welcomed the development, but that it was “deeply unfortunate Sinn Fein tried to turn this into a sectarian issue”.

When it comes to the extra DCAL cash he said: “Hopefully DCAL will provide, and I think they need to provide, assurances that the money that they have presumably ringfenced for the project will not be offset by taking it from some intended pot elsewhere.”