A senior Ulster Unionist has said that the contents of a private meeting between Michelle O’Neill and the woman who chairs the committee tasked with scrutinising her should be released in the name of “transparency and honesty”.

Doug Beattie was adding his voice to a TUV call this week for “contemporaneous notes” from that private meeting in 2024 to be published – something which the Executive Office has so far declined to do.

To do otherwise cultivates "an element of secrecy” which “raises suspicions”, said Mr Beattie, adding that this is “easily fixed by releasing the documents”.

The private meeting between Alliance MLA Paula Bradshaw, who chairs the Executive Office Committee at Stormont, and the First Minister, came ahead of a scheduled appearance by Ms O’Neill in front of that committee.

placeholder image — Paula Bradshaw, pictured chairing the Executive Office Committee at Stormont; there have been calls for the raw notes from the minutes of a private meeting between her and Michelle O'Neill to be released

The private meeting discussed what could be asked at the committee hearing.

The committee had been due to hear questions about Sinn Fein’s handling of child safeguarding issues and other scandals embroiling it at the time, but Ms O’Neill refused to answer anything she deemed not relevant to her ministerial office.

Official minutes of the private meeting with Ms Bradshaw have already been released (although they were written up five days after the meeting took place, amid a media furore).

What TUV MLA Timothy Gaston is now seeking are the raw “contemporaneous notes” taken by the minute-takers on the day of the private meeting itself.

He believes they are relevant to a decision this week to ban him from Stormont for two days over clashes between him and Ms Bradshaw (specifically, he was censured for telling her to “breathe” during a committee meeting).

"If the informal notes do not conflict with the official minute, there should be no difficulty in releasing them,” Mr Gatson has said.

Doug Beattie has now told the News Letter: “I’m quite clear: if we have a First Minister’s Office that wants openness and transparency, and there’s any question at all in regards to any aspect of the role they do, and indeed the chair of the Executive Office committee, then they should release those minutes.

"It’s really that simple. People deserve transparency and honesty.

"If there’s nothing to hide, there’s no issue in releasing these documents, and I don’t understand why they don’t.”

To not publish them "smacks of a secretiveness” he said, adding: “And that’s not good for our democracy.”

As to whether Mr Gaston should have been sanctioned for telling Ms Bradshaw to “breathe”, Mr Beattie said: “There is rough and tumble in everything we do, and people mis-speak on many occasions.

"Passions run high on many occasions.

"I think we should be able to deal with that through being able to speak to each other and where we’ve made a mistake, make an apology [as Mr Gaston did to Ms Bradshaw].

"For this to result in a two-day suspension, I think, was over-and-above what it should have done.”