DRD
“in an open, transparent and independent manner…”
As the BBC reported on Thursday, the Northern Ireland Department for Regional Development has advertised for applications to a new permament board of directors at the troubled NI Water to replace the interim appointments made earlier this year. According to the advert in the Irish News It is expected that a Chair will be appointed in early [...] more »
NI Water: Did whistle-blowing lead to a switch in contract?
I’ve uploaded this whistleblower correspondence. What passes as acceptable practice in DRD at the most senior level, does not measure up to its own policy standards. Here we have a complaint to the Permanent Secretary from the owner of Contracting Out, Sue Holmes. The original complaint is not included, but you can see from the paper [...] more »
NI Water: ICO looking into MacKenzie’s deleted email…
Yesterday Diana Rusk in the Irish News noted that NI Water supremo Laurence McKenzie just happened to delete that controversial email text which Paul Priestley sent him, a full 17 days after receiving it. But an FOI response from NI Water reveals he deleted it the day after NI Water received an FOI requesting it. [...] more »
Minister on “solo run with enormous financial implications” without Executive approval
What to make of the Northern Ireland Regional Development Minister, Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy’s, apparent declaration of intent over NI Water? Some would argue that the stated objective, of ’re-nationalisation’ [within Northern Ireland] of the Water Service NI Water, was the main reason behind the ongoing saga. From the BBC report Finance Minister Sammy Wilson criticised Mr Murphy’s [...] more »
NI Water: Why did MacKenzie break up NIW’s commercial review team?
With the inclusion of a submission to the PAC from Contracting Out, the NI Audit Office team will almost certainly spotlight NI Water’s customer service and IT contract with Steria Ltd. Not least since this is the only part of the initial controversy that substantially touches on the value for money issue. For all the [...] more »
NI Water: Minister failed to pick up Board’s early questions about Dixon?
Okay, another bullish performance from Minister Murphy here on the UTV report, though it is rare to see such a normally competent performer stuck for words in front of a camera. What’s complicated things for him was the robust nature of the questioning from Conall McDevitt, on the amount of work the Minister did to [...] more »
NI Water: “Recent revelations left us questioning whether we had been misled”
That quotation is from a rather more bullish statement from the NI Consumer Council CEO Antoinette McKeown than we have been accustomed to hearing as of late. The whole statement is posted below (courtesy of Nevin who chased them up on this), but several other things stand out. They pick out the Stakeholder Unit for [...] more »
NI Water: Minister backs his own action in sacking NEDs
Eamonn reports on Twitter this morning that the Minister is unrepentant about his sacking of NI Water’s four Non Executive Directors on the questionable evidence of an Independent Review Team that was demonstrably connected a priori to the Chief Executive of NI Water and which was partly written by his now suspended Permanent Secretary. The Minister adds [...] more »
DRD Permanent Secretary suspended
UTV Live are reporting [added link] that the Department of Regional Development Permanent Secretary Paul Priestly has been suspended pending an investigation. They also reported that NI Regional Development Minister, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy, described his permanent secretary’s position as ‘untenable’. Adds From a News Letter report 14 August Mr Murphy, the Sinn Fein minister [...] more »
NI Water: “It was brought to my attention, investigated and I took action.”
As well as revealing his “reservations” about police services, the Northern Ireland Regional Development Minister, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy, also gave the Irish News his first recorded comments about the troubled NI Water Board, and his emergency appointees. Or, rather, his first recorded comments about the questions surrounding the Independent Review Team. From the Irish News Mr Murphy said [...] more »
NI Water: DRD had form in procurement issues…
Now, I imagine that the former Chair of NI Water Chris Mellor is not too pleased with his mention in this week’s Private Eye. Not least because it links him and his fellow sacked non executive directors directly to issues around procurement at time when the health regulator Monitor, of which he is currently the [...] more »
NI Water: “The permanent secretary accidently hit the caps button”
The News Letter this morning picks up on our ‘scoop’, the email from Permanent Secretary Paul Priestly to the Auditor General, Kieran Donnelly, and asks DRD for clarification of what was going on with those BLOCK CAPs of his: “The permanent secretary did not make recommendations on behalf of the IRT. The permanent secretary was not [...] more »
NI Water: “I think it would be helpful for you to meet them…”
Okay, we now have some documents of our own to share. The first is an email sent from Peter Dixon to Paul Priestley and copied to Jackie Henry and Glenn Thompson, Mr Dixon’s fellow members of the Independent Review Team on foot of who’s report the Minister sacked the four NEDs at NI Water. It’s [...] more »
NI Water: On the Chinese walls between DRD and NI Water…
Today is the deadline for DRD to get the text of the first two drafts of the IRT’s report requested by them at the PAC meeting on July 1st. It will then be up to chair Paul Maskey as to whether he chooses to share it immediately, or hold off until the next committee meeting [...] more »
NI Water: Board prevented from acting on contents of Internal Audit?
The Coalition government at Westminster clearly attach great public importance to Non Executive Directors on Departmental Boards. On his appointment as lead Non Executive Director to the Government, Lord Browne of Madingley laid out this description of the role of NEDs to departmental boards: “This is a role within Government but also independent of it. [...] more »
NI Water: What was Dixon’s competence to adjudicate on a GoCo/NDPB?
Gerry Loughran’s letter to John Dallat re NI Water makes for interesting reading (Update: the BBC covered the letter story this evening). Loughran is Peter Dixon’s Chair at Phoenix Gas, and a former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. In his response leaves both John Dallat, and Paul Maskey, the chair of the PAC [...] more »
NI Water Timeline: “Administrative procedures are the responsibility of management…”
I’ve been working on a timeline of the NI Water story just to try and put some of the material we have into some kind of objective order… I’ve gone for completion rather than trying to hone in on any one aspect… However a number of things jump out… One is how long Priestly is in [...] more »
NI Water: DRD kept their ‘demonstrable independence’ hidden from Commissioner
Yesterday’s written answer from the Minister of DRD to Patsy McGlone’s AQW will bring some disquiet, particularly in light of the aribitrary manner by which his department dealt with the last Board at NI Water. What DRD understands by the word ‘independent’ is not something many people in business or the wider world would recognise. But [...] more »
NI Water: Were the IRT’s Terms of Reference ‘Gerrymandered’?
The latest we hear is that DRD/NIW are having problems getting anyone to take on the role of chairman of NI Water. Slugger understands that a number of individuals have declined an approach. It is not difficult to see why. As a careful reading of the final report makes clear the IRT itself did not [...] more »
NI Water: “No, I do not believe that there was a conflict of interest.”
Slugger understands that there is growing unease amongst members of Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee with Peter Dixon’s unprecedented attack on the Committee’s line of inquiry, and the apparent silence on the matter from their own chair, Paul Maskey. This passage from Hansard is illustrative of the line which drew fire from the Phoenix Gas CEO: Ms Purvis: On [...] more »
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Books
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Hearing the Other Voice from the Grave: Why Should we Listen to David Ervine’s Stories?
Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland has received considerable attention in the press and in the public realm since its publication earlier this year. Although the book relates the experiences of the Provisional IRA’s Brendan Hughes and the PUP/UVF’s David Ervine, much of the discussion has focused on Hughes’ stories [...] read our review » -
A New Vision for the Catholic Church – Book Review
The oft-quoted verse from the book of Proverbs, ‘where there is no vision, the people perish,’ (chapter 29, verse 18) opens a new book by Gerry O’Hanlon, A New Vision for the Catholic Church: A View from Ireland (Columba Press, 2011). That verse could be considered an apt summary of the current state of the [...] read our review »
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Of the Old North and other Vanished Kingdoms..
I’m currently trawling through Norman Davies’s fabulous new tome – “Vanished Kingdoms” – Five stars in the (London) Telegraph’s review from Ben Wilson: All the nations that have ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand,” writes Norman Davies. “The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the human [...] read our review »
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