Council chief executive ‘offended’ as councillors criticise her over ratepayers’ money going to Ian Paisley fundraiser

The 2017 dinner - for which tickets cost £150 each - was held at Ballymena’s Tullyglass Hotel and, at a time when the DUP was propping up Theresa May’s government, senior Tory Michael Gove was the speaker.

However, last year the Audit Office found that the council broke its own rules in spending ratepayers’ money on the event because it had breached its spending limit of £500. In response to that, the council simply removed its spending limit.

Last month the Electoral Commission fined Mr Paisley £1,300 because in selling dinner tickets to two councils - Mid and East Antrim Borough Council and Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council - he had accepted donations from impermissible donors.

This morning a special meeting of Mid and East Antrim Borough Council was called by the Alliance Party, supported by several other parties, in an attempt to clarify how the situation had arisen.

Although some councillors had been present at the dinner, there were no declarations of interest at the outset of the meeting.

During a somewhat disjointed meeting where some councillors were taking part remotely due to the pandemic, it emerged that a UUP councillor - Robin Cherry - had attended the fundraiser for Mr Paisley, a political rival.

UUP councillor Keith Turner said his colleague “spoke to Mr Gove on farming matters” and was “more than satisfied” that “Mr Gove engaged with him at length”.

He said he was clear that “we were misled” about the nature of the dinner but “this is a nothing motion with a nothing outcome - it has already been discussed”, added: “For myself and for the UUP that’s where it lies...it’s done, it’s dusted...let it lie”.

The council’s DUP mayor, Peter Johnston, said there had been an accusation that as mayor he had tried to obstruct the process of holding the meeting, something he said he wanted to “in the strongest possible way refute”.

He suggested that the Alliance Party could have made a Freedom of Information request or had a private meeting with council officers to ask questions about the issue, adding that it was “disappointing that we’re here this morning taking up a lot of time and resource...to carry out a political point-scoring exercise”.

Alliance wanted to question council chief executive Anne Donaghy in public, something which the Mayor said was impossible under the council’s standing orders - its rules for the conduct of its meetings.

Alliance councillor Patricia O’Lynn then proposed a vote to set aside standing orders, as sometimes happens at Stormont, but the Mayor said that if that was passed he would refuse to chair the meeting because it would no longer be a council meeting and he would then be “asking council officers to step down from the meeting as well”.

Ms O’Lynn then withdrew her proposal, and the meeting discussed a motion from her party colleague Geraldine Mulvenna which called for clarity on what had happened, asked the Audit Office to investigate how authorisation had been given for the money being sent to Mr Paisley and asked for the spending limit to be reimposed.

DUP councillor Billy Ashe said he was “really concerned about the reasons that we are here” and party colleague Greg McKeen took issue with the reference to a “DUP fundraiser”, arguing that this was inaccurate because the money had gone to Mr Paisley rather than to the party.

Ms Donaghy, told the meeting that she had not even seen the Electoral Commission’s report into the council’s impermissible donation to Mr Paisley and that she had not spoken to the commission, telling councillors that the questions were wrongly directed to her.

But Councillor Mulvenna said that the council was “in disrepute” as a result of what had happened with the dinner.

Her Alliance colleague, Councillor O’Lynn, asked the council chief executive to “show respect to the members of this council by answering reasonable questions in full” and she said that “to continue denying this council has donated money to a political fundraiser is a farce”.

She said that in 2017 the chief executive had placed Mr Paisley’s dinner on the agenda as an “agri-food business event” and that after the event when questions were asked the then mayor Paul Reid had “screamed down” those who questioned the event - which he attended.

She said there should have been “alarm bells” when Mr Paisley requested that the money should be sent as a cheque to his constituency office and it was “blatantly obvious that this was a political event”.

She asked Ms Donaghy if she was “so keen to attend this event that your judgement may have been clouded”.

The TUV’s Timothy Gaston said that there had been a protracted lack of transparency from the council over the event.

He said that the council’s chief financial officer continued to insist to him that “Mr Paisley didn’t mislead her” and council officers had not misled councillors.

He said that he had “got more information from the audit office than from this council chamber”, pointing to the Audit Office having referred to “free DUP merchandise sitting in the middle of the tables”. he asked: “Did the senior [council] officers avail of any of that merchandise?”

However, he said that he did not intend to take any further action “at this stage”

He asked Ms Donaghy “to be honest with the chamber”.

Sinn Féin’s James McKeown said that “once again [Ian Paisley] has dropped this council in it and brought this council into disrepute”.

The SDLP’s Eugene Reid said he was there to represent ratepayers and there was a need for the questions to be answered “in an honest and transparent fashion”.

The DUP’s Greg McKeen said that “Ian Paisley ran this event in good faith” and that “no other cabinet ministers have been available to council in this way before”.

He said it was “unfortunate that such a positive public engagement has been turned into a matter of controversy” and added: “We should draw this to a close and move on”.

Ms Donaghy then spoke, saying that she was “more than happy to answer all the questions” - but that she would do so in writing at a later point.

She said: “A lot of misrepresentation has been spoken in this chamber today”.

Taking issue with what some councillors had said, she told them: “It is not a DUP dinner; it is defined as a fundraiser”.

She went on: “I do take offence and I totally refute some of the things that have been said here today. I carry out this job with all of my energy and I do the best I can for this council. I have to say when people are calling into question my integrity and in fact making allegations of my conduct, I hold the right to come back on that”.

She said that she tried to do everything with “honesty, integrity and passion” and added: “I would remind members that a lot of the things you enjoy and give to your citizens would not be given if he hadn’t got that networking and those passionate ways of going forward”.

Councillors voted on the Alliance motion which was defeated 18-7, with seven councillors abstaining, some of whom said they were doing so until they could get answers to the questions posed to the chief executive.

——— ———

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers — and consequently the revenue we receive — we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.uk and enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Alistair Bushe

Editor