Special Advisors

Interview: Jim Allister MLA talks about his Special Advisors bill…

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Next Monday the Northern Ireland assembly order paper will contain a private members bill from one of the few non-government party MLAs in the chamber. That member is Jim Allister. His tenure in politics spans decades and he has been present over the course of many political changes including the function or dysfunction of local institutions, he issued a challenge to the Assembly members: “if people are serious about cleaning up this place then they should have nothing to fear …

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Special advisor pay: as opaque as ever

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The News Letter has an interesting item on the pay for special advisors (SPADS). These advisors are picked by the minister and the normal process of competition is not followed: that may well be fair enough and certainly occurs at Westminster. Unlike Whitehall SPADs, however, the pay for the Stomont’s SPADs is not published: rather salary bands are published; the maximum a SPAD can earn is now £90,000. That £90,000 figure is interesting as it is a rise from £82,531 …

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Stormont’s glut of special advisors giving rise to party honours system?

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In yesterday’s Irish News, Brian Feeney cast a particularly penetrating light on a peculiar aspect of Northern Ireland’s political settlement, the secretive lives of its many special advisors… Another reason for the restraint of all Stormont parties about Sinn Fein’s appointment is that starting a shouting match runs the real issue which is the matter of special advisors as a species. We have nineteen of them in the north, eight of them in the Office of First and Deputy First …

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