Sinn Fein expresses anger over 'dire' St. Patrick's Day preparations in Belfast and blames lack of funding

Last November Belfast City Council officials admitted they found it difficult to hire a company to cover the music festivities, and that organisations had seen the council’s funding offer as too low.

At the council’s City Growth and Regeneration Committee meeting elected representatives were told council officials have decided to drop the March 16th Custom House Square concert.

Sinn Féin Councillor Conor Maskey said it was January and the council only had “the creaking bones” of a festival planned. He successfully proposed that the committee support a report looking at the mistakes made by the local authority.

The Committee Director told councillors: “As previously reported, we went to the market for a number of tenders, and we received one successful approach which was for Féile an Phobail to deliver a city-wide music programme.

“Given the lack of response to the other three lots, we did engage with the market, and engaged extensively with the Beat Carnival as regards to them continuing to deliver the parade.

“During those conversations it became clear that the Beat had taken the decision that they would not be participating in the procurement. Since then officers have engaged with other suppliers, and we are confident we will deliver the parade on the 17th.”

He added: “We have engaged Tradfest to provide a city centre musical programme. This is a slightly different approach from previous years where we had a concert in Custom House Square on the 16th. The data suggests the attendance at that was quite low.”

Mr Maskey said: “I am not against the recommendations, we need to get kicking on with this. But as a party we are extremely disappointed with how this has all panned out.

“I know from talking to one of the groups involved at the beginning, that there is a real disappointment around their expectations of how this would have rolled through, over more than two years. There was an excitement around the groups of how we could build a process and we could let them, along with our officers, organically develop.

“But to get to the stage where there are four lots, and only one expression of interest to get it over the line, that is dire. It tells you there is something wrong within the department, or with the visioning of how this should be taken forward.

He added: “The money was too low – the feedback we got last time was that too little resources were coming in for the investments the organisations had to make. That needs to be looked at, we need to know what is going on there and why that is. It is not good enough.