On the 2nd of December 2024, it was exactly 25 years since ‘the appointed day’ – the day when legislative powers and executive authorities were devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly. But what was it like to work there in those early days?
Paul Moore, a former Assembly official who had been seconded to his job ‘up the hill’ the week before devolution, remembers very well the excitement and expectations surrounding the new Assembly, and his surprise at finding himself working for the Assembly Committee that was being chaired by Ian Paisley.
In this third of three ‘episodes’ covering the Assembly’s earliest weeks of operation, Paisley’s Committee opens its first Inquiry with an evidence session, set against a background of uncertainty about the Assembly’s future.
Paul has adapted these episodes from his book: ‘Doctor Paisley and Mister Clerk – Recollections of Ian Paisley’s Agriculture Committee Years’ which is available in paperback and e-book formats from amazon.co.uk: https://amzn.eu/d/89Lkwxq
Below is an audio version of this post
The Committee has begun its first inquiry into Producers’ debt, and the team has put together a substantial evidence session involving seven of the major retailers operating in Northern Ireland. That session is happening today – Friday the 11th of February 2000.
Because the regular Committee meeting rooms in Parliament Buildings are quite small and ill-equipped, everyone agreed there was a need for a venue that had plenty of public seating, and with cameras to allow proceedings to be transmitted to the press and the media. The Senate Chamber meets those criteria, and the ARD Committee is going to be the first to use it for a major ‘set piece’.
The Senate was once the upper house of an earlier Parliament of Northern Ireland, and Senators had sat in their own Chamber, which was more ornate than the Assembly Chamber – a bit like the UK Parliament’s House of Lords versus the House of Commons. The Senate Chamber has Westminster-style dispatch boxes and bench seating, and a particularly grand Speaker’s chair.
The Assembly authorities are reluctant to interfere with these features, given their historical significance, but that makes it hard to envisage how a modern-day Committee meeting will work. Stephen and I nip down to check the set-up, and can see that some regular chairs had been added and microphones provided, and while the layout looks awkward, we think it is just about workable.
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Before I continue this story, I must mention the Gentlemen’s toilets close to the main entrance to the Senate Chamber. Built for the comfort of Senators, they were the most fabulous and the grandest toilets I had ever seen. The size of a small ballroom, they were beautifully finished in sharp black and white tiling with the very best and whitest sanitary ware that I have ever had the pleasure to wee in.
Unfortunately, these toilets were later remodeled to provide additional office space, and I remember being desperately disappointed to see this during a visit back to Parliament Buildings long after my time there. I wish I’d taken photos. No, perhaps that would have been weird! You’ll have to take my word for it.
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Anyway. Today’s the day for the Senate session, and there is a ‘full house’ of members in attendance. The mood seems very business-like, but there is also an undercurrent of uncertainty, since it is being widely reported that the Assembly is going to be suspended later today.
The International Commission on Decommissioning has reported this week that it has “received no information from the IRA as to when decommissioning will start”.
In a depressingly downward spiral over the last 8 or 9 days, the Secretary of State has (with the aim of stopping the threatened resignation of the First Minister) said he will suspend the Assembly if the IRA does not decommission. The IRA has responded with a statement that it has entered into no agreements to decommission arms. To make matters worse, the Continuity IRA claimed responsibility for a bomb in County Fermanagh at the start of this week.
Despite all this bad news, the Chairman and the members are intent on carrying out the planned business, and they agree their tactics in closed session before the retailers are allowed in.
It has already become accepted practice that I will provide members with summaries of papers received by the Committee and suggest possible questions to explore matters raised in those papers. Spoon-feeding, it sometimes felt like, though some members were more reliant than others on what I gave them.
Almost all of the seven retail companies have sent explanatory papers to the Committee, but many of these only arrived yesterday and I have had little time to prepare anything additional for members other than a few basic questions. The Assembly’s research service has, however, produced a paper on the prices of agricultural produce, and we hand this out immediately before the retailers come in.
The Chairman has just opened up the public session and it is clear from his tone that he wants this to be seen as his show.
He starts by referring to the research paper which, he says, has come from a “top Assembly researcher”. Dr Paisley then goes on to speak of the “catastrophe” that farmers are suffering from, the “terrible tragedy” of farmers shooting worthless bull calves that he (allegedly) saw on a farm visit yesterday. He then claims that he has asked the ‘middlemen’ whether they (like farmers) had “gone bankrupt or considered suicide”, and reports that they had “laughed and said ‘No’”.
Such exaggeration, hyperbole and apocryphal storytelling have already become quite familiar to us as Dr Paisley’s standard way of operating in front of an audience. While he presumably thinks that this approach will provide credibility and gravity to the day’s discussions, I am not convinced that it does, as it is all a bit dramatic and obvious.
A psychiatrist would probably have a field day too with Dr Paisley’s defensive reaction to some teething problems with the Senate set-up.
It is really difficult to hear the retailers’ first representative as he stands to make his presentation and Dr Paisley is straight in with his disclaimers: “the Speaker made this arrangement”, “we would have arranged things differently”, and “the microphones are not as good as the Speaker told us they were”. He is even suggesting that the representatives should “give him an earful” about it.
I think he’s trying to be humorous, but I’m finding it all a bit childish and unnecessary, and I’m not convinced that the Speaker will be amused to discover that he’s being referred to in this way.
Ah. That explains it. We’ve just had a quiet word with the IT folk who’d set up the Chamber. Apparently, people need to be seated when making their presentations if the mikes are to pick them up. Dr Paisley lets everybody know this and there are no further issues with the sound, and, happily, no subsequent need for the Speaker’s ear to be filled.
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We are now well into the session. To be fair, if you can ignore his defensiveness, his use of hyperbole, and his repeated and borderline sexist references to “the housewife,” I feel that Dr Paisley is running the proceedings pretty effectively, and with quite a witty commentary.
The representative from Musgrave Supervalu Centra (which services small owner-operated stores) has just criticized the larger retailers for their “massive stores” and “predatory pricing”. Dr Paisley tells him he’d be “lucky to get out with your head on your body” and goes on to say that he is sorry that he does not “have the sword of a serjeant at arms” – presumably with which to protect the man rather than remove his head on the major retailers’ behalf. This approach seems to be working well and is keeping the session light and good-natured.
Given that the session is being recorded by ‘Hansard’ (or more correctly: the Official Report) I am not under pressure to write a lot of stuff down. This allows me to relax a bit and be an interested spectator regarding the performance of some of the other members.
George Savage’s contributions are consistent: everyone else in the supply chain is, apparently, making a living off the backs of the farmers. He says the same thing nearly every time he speaks and for me it is already getting a bit old. He also is prone to saying “and this is true” by way of emphasis, suggesting that some of what he says isn’t!
Billy Armstrong and Ian Paisley Junior demonstrate the breadth of capabilities among Committee members when they reference the research paper. Billy misunderstands a figure and alleges that only 7% of potatoes sold come from Northern Ireland which, embarrassingly, everyone can see is obviously wrong. Conversely, Junior correctly identifies significant price differentials and challenges the retailers coherently and vigorously on these. I reckon that when he’s not making mischief and winding up the Nationalist members, Junior can be quite good at performing the Committee’s challenge function.
Gardiner Kane makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is reading from the pre-prepared questions. This is not really an issue until he repeats a question that the Chairman had already asked.
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That turned out not to be a unique occurrence with Gardiner and the funniest (though embarrassing at the time) example occurred several months later when members were quizzing some Department officials. That time, a second member repeated the first member’s question, which was bad enough, only for Gardiner to ask the exact same question for a third time! Oh dear. I was mortified for him.
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Gerry McHugh is fond of asking multiple questions when it comes to his turn, and he’s doing it again today. And he’s raising subjects unconnected to the Inquiry! Gerry’s delivery can also be a bit monotonous. I am sure that when I read his contributions in the Official Report, I will see the validity of some of Gerry’s points – that’s been the case previously – but his meaning is getting lost in his delivery.
Individually, members are all taking their turn to ask questions, but I don’t think that they are acting as a collective yet. Nor do I get any sense of the retailers’ responses being challenged or resulting in a deeper exploration of any particular point.
It also seems that members aren’t really listening to those presenting. Every single one of the retailers has reported that their retail prices for potatoes has fallen by 50% over the past 9-10 months, and the research paper confirms this. But member after member keeps insisting that they ‘know’ that retail prices for potatoes and other foods are constantly rising.
That must be frustrating for the retailers. It’s frustrating for me too but I know that I’ll have access to the ‘Minutes of Evidence’ that will be produced by the Official Report, and I can at least ensure that the Committee’s Inquiry report accurately reflects the evidence that we are hearing today.
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We have reached the end of what has been a very long session, and Dr Paisley has just brought the meeting to a close. In light of the uncertainty about the Assembly’s possible suspension, the Chairman says that he will call the next meeting only when it is appropriate to do so.
I follow Dr Paisley and Ian Junior out of the Senate Chamber, past the ballroom-like toilets, and along the corridor into the Great Hall. There are many journalists, MLAs and staff milling about. The place is ‘hiving’.
The word is that a suspension of the Assembly is now inevitable, and the journalists are all clamouring for the views of senior politicians. As he barges through the melee, Dr Paisley is asked to comment on the anticipated suspension. In his usual fashion, he doesn’t break stride as he roars his response: “It is terrible; it’s an absolute tragedy”.
I am quite shocked by this. Dr Paisley and his party are clearly not fans of the Institutions or of the Good Friday Agreement that led to their formation. He and his party colleagues continue to be very vociferous about what they see as the Agreement’s weaknesses, including the decommissioning issue.
But in this moment, and on hearing his unprepared response, I am getting a sense that Dr Paisley has some internal conflict around his involvement with the Committee. I think that he genuinely believes that he and his Committee can do some good for an agri-food industry that is very close to his heart, and which is (by all accounts) struggling badly. And now that his Committee’s inquiry has got underway with a very public and successful ‘Dr Paisley show’ it must really be frustrating for him that the debt Inquiry, it would seem, is about to be stalled.
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Sure enough, later that day the Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, signed an Order suspending the Assembly and restoring Direct Rule.
I too am frustrated and disappointed by the suspension, not least because I believe I have seen some ‘green shoots’ of proper parliamentary and inclusive politics, rather than the tribal and divisive politics that are all I have ever known. Will these shoots ever get the chance to grow on?
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It is a very strange atmosphere in the office on this following Monday morning. There is an element of relief that the treadmill of long hours, hard work and no tea-breaks has stopped, but also a real concern that it might never restart, and a fear of what the wider consequences of that might be for Northern Ireland. I have only been ‘up the hill’ for eleven or twelve weeks, and I have no idea what is in store for my colleagues and me either. All very unsettling.
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In the first week of suspension, the IRA withdrew its co-operation with the Commission on Decommissioning, and we looked to be in for the long haul, politically. But there must have been huge efforts going on behind the scenes to try to rescue the Institutions, and there was a slight change to the political ‘mood music’ as early as March 2000.
The crux was now about whether there needed to be ‘prior decommissioning’ of the IRA’s weapons before the Assembly could be restored, and it seemed that may not be a deal-breaker for David Trimble, though he had to face down some fierce opposition from within his party on this issue.
As usual, careful choreography was deployed. This included a statement from the IRA that it was ready to begin a process that would “completely and verifiably” put its arms beyond use, along with a suggestion that international figures would inspect IRA arms dumps and confirm that they were not being used. The Secretary of State did his bit by announcing that he would restore the Assembly.
Finally, at midnight on the 29th of May 2000, powers are once again devolved to Stormont.
The Assembly had been down for just over three months, but it hasn’t really felt that long to us on the Committee team. We are anxious about what might happen next, but also raring to go, and we can almost feel the treadmill powering up under our collective feet.
Next time: In Episode 4 – ‘Mister Clerk 2 – the Sequel’ – it is just after Christmas 2000 and Paul is appointed to the Clerk’s role. He is now responsible for the Committee’s operation, and directly answerable to the Chair, Deputy Chair and Committee members. It’s not long before he finds out just how lonely a place that can be…
This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.
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