Document 9: Nolan Show transcripts

TRANSCRIPT 1

Programme: Nolan Show

Date & Time: 28.10.2020, 09:05

Subject: Business grants paid into SF accounts

Prepared By -

Typist: Donna Morris

MMU: GI/PF

 

STEPHEN NOLAN

A political bombshell this morning, a senior Stormont source has told our Nolan investigation unit that SF have been battling for days to stop the Nolan programme, and therefore you the public, finding out details around three bundles of £10,000 small business grants that were received by the party. This cash was supposed to only support Covid affected small businesses. MLAs and party offices were deemed ineligible to benefit from this grant. Politicians of course were not affected by Covid in this way, MLA salaries continued no matter what so they were definitely not in any way deserving of this money.

To all of the hardworking people in this country who lost their jobs and had no money, to the workers who have had their pay slashed, to the taxi drivers who got no support from Stormont for many, many months; the Nolan Show wants you to know the details around this story.

We can reveal today the following, SF MLA Maoliosa McHugh received £10,000 into what he described as ‘our West Tyrone account’. This huge sum of £10,000 would have been automatically sent into his office bank account without him asking for it. There was no wrongdoing by him in receiving the money; that is not the story. The key question, the fundamental question is what happened to that money when Mr McHugh and SF realised they had it? Remember, integrity is what SF expect of others.

Despite Maoliosa McHugh receiving this public money many months ago a Stormont source has told this programme there was a scramble this week, on Monday of this week within SF to quickly pay the money back and that that only happened after the party found out the Nolan Show was asking questions about it. Now we asked SF MLA Maoliosa McHugh to clear this up for us; we gave him multiple opportunities to dispute what our source had claimed and we gave him multiple opportunities to assure the public of NI that the money had been paid back a long time before this week. He gave no such assurance.

So was the money paid back months ago? His exact words to us.

MAOLIOSA MCHUGH

No I am not saying that.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Mr McHugh told us he was notified when the £10,000 came into his office account; he claimed as soon as it did that he told SF organisers to send it back, but despite this the SF MLA, Maoliosa McHugh, despite him telling us he got notifications when the £10,000 was paid into his bank account, he seems to be totally in the dark about when the public got their money back out of his bank account, out of his office account again. Now why could he not simply check his office bank statement and tell us? He doesn’t know when £10,000 left his account to get back to the public again? It’s a pretty big amount of money isn’t it? Would you notice it if it came back out of your account? I guess a clear question to Mr McHugh this morning, will you check the bank statements now and tell the public, clear this up for us.

Now seriously, Mr McHugh did admit he got confirmation on Monday of this week that the huge sum of money, £10,000, had been paid back, guess what? That is the very same day the Nolan Show was telling the public about the £10,000 windfalls that some people had wrongly received.

Clear out the noise from this story, remember the vital question; was your public money only paid back by SF after the BBC Nolan Show publicly said we were investigating this matter? Mr McHugh has told us he doesn’t know what the public got its money back. We asked him many times, doesn’t know. Knew when it came in, hasn’t a clue when the £10,000 went out again.

MAOLIOSA MCHUGH

I couldn’t just say exactly when it was.

STEPHEN NOLAN

We have voiced this up by one of our team. But it was paid back months ago we asked?

MAOLIOSA MCHUGH

It was paid back.

STEPHEN NOLAN

We asked again.

MAOLIOSA MCHUGH

I couldn’t tell you but I know it was paid back.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Mr McHugh told us they had great difficulty contacting LPS at the time to pay the money back. The Nolan Show has discovered that as early as May there was a simple email address widely published so that ineligible recipients could contact the authorities to arrange to send the money back.  Now it is not only Mr McHugh within SF who isn’t able to tell any of you this morning the timing of when you the public got your money back. SF’s central command have been silent too, totally silent. And remember, taxi drivers, hairdressers and many people on minimum wage in this country have had to suffer dramatic losses to incomes since Covid began. SF knew there was a shortage of public money available for these people and yet SF cannot tell us how long it sat on three bundles of £10,000. £30,000 of public money.

Now we have done everything we can to give SF the opportunity to assure the public that they did not just pay it back after the Nolan Show got involved. There are questions about a second SF representative and we will return to that in a second. But another important twist in this story this morning is about Stormont itself and the culture of secrecy that was identified within the RHI inquiry. Remember Sir Patrick Coughlin, who chaired that inquiry, uncovered practices where minutes were deliberately not taken of meetings so that you the public would never find out what was going on. We are not suggesting any minutes weren’t taken but we are asking, has Stormont learnt their lesson? Are they now open and honest with the public? But we can add to this story today, we can reveal to all of you there was a war behind the scenes at Stormont this week where we are told Diane Dodds the Economy Minister wanted the public to be told, three Covid small business support payments had been made to MLAs or their party offices. But that is when the battle began and we have been told that the DoF refused to let the statement with meaningful detailed answers be released to you the public.

Who stopped that statement? Why was it stopped?  What didn’t they want any of you to find out from within that statement? Do these people never learn? Did they really expect the Nolan Show to roll over and allow them to duck the questions we had asked around whether and when MLAs had paid back £10,000, sums of your cash that they should never have been sent in the first place? Remember some working class people had been left with next to nothing during this pandemic, and we were determined that you were entitled to know what politicians had been getting and whether and when they had paid it back.

We have been working on this story for a number of days and we have more to place in the public domain this morning. A second SF representative Elisha McCallion has been approached by the Nolan investigations team, she has not responded to us. When we told her a senior Stormont source told us she too was in receipt of the £10,000 small business support payment. Now remember if she did get the cash put straight into her bank account she would have received that money automatically without fault on her part; it could have been paid to her automatically just because she paid her rates by direct debit, no wrong doing by Elisha McCallion whatsoever, that is not our story.

Firstly, why doesn’t Elisha McCallion just tell any of you whether she got this money or not? Why the silence from her and SF? Now if she did get the money many months ago it is the same key question, when did she pay it back? Did she pay it back immediately or did she only pay it back this week?

Did she only pay it back when the Nolan Show was running the story this week? Did she only pay it back yesterday? Silence from Elisha McCallion, silence from SF. There are many working class people in this country here in NI who are struggling during Covid and have received very little support from the government. The £10,000 grant at the heart of this story was never intended for politicians, because not one penny of their wages or their allowances has ever been affected by Covid. So only behalf of all of the working people in this country, the Nolan Show has a simple question for SF today; did you give the public it’s money back within a reasonable time of realising you had got it, or did you only give it back when you realised the Nolan Show knew you had it, lodged in your accounts, sitting there all along? The answer to that question may just help the public determine how much equality, respect and integrity you, SF, has given to the working taxpayers of this country.

Already this morning members of the public are reacting to this breaking political story today. How do you respond to this Carl?

CARL

This is absolutely sickening, sickening. I would question the wrong doing of those politicians because when the scheme was introduced I had to apply for it, even though my rates was being paid by Direct Debit I had to apply to it, put in my ratepayer ID, my occupancy ID and various details. So I would question as regards did they actually apply for that?

 

STEPHEN NOLAN

No they did not. I am sure. I think it is really important that we all focus on the story this morning and where it is at. And a statement has just within the last few seconds dropped from SF to the Nolan Show and it continues, SF are refusing to tell any member of the Northern Irish public if they only paid this money back when they realised the Nolan Show was investigating it and that is the key part to this story. They received this money many months ago, they knew they shouldn’t have had it, did they only pay it back this week on Monday and yesterday? Here is the SF statement:

Three SF offices received automatic and unsolicited payments of £10,000 under the Small Business Grant Scheme, SF offices did not qualify and did not apply for the scheme and the monies have been returned to the LPS.

Every citizen in this country should recognise that what SF is refusing to tell you is when they paid it back, did they only pay it back this week? Now the DoF will know the answer to that, or should be able to find out. The Economy Minister, Diane Dodds can ask a question about that and might be able to find out, because it is a key question.

CARL

It is sickening and these are members who created the eligibility scheme, sorry not those three but certainly as members of a legislative Assembly.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Elisha McCallion is not but she is a representative of SF.

CARL

But they are all aware of the eligibility to receive that £10,000 scheme and I think it is absolutely sickening that people out there who are struggling on a day to day basis, hearing this this morning, I think they will be absolutely disgusted. And from a business point of view to hear this, with other businesses still struggling today, knowing this, and struggling back then as well knowing this has happened I think it is just a slap in the face. And they should go. I think it is time for them to go, this is disgusting, it is time for them to go.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Statement from the Department for Economy, their Minister Diane Dodds. Diane Dodds’ department is saying, ‘two payments were made in error under this category, one to a current elected representative’, we understand that is Maoliosa McHugh, I am putting that in, the statement continues, ‘and one to a former elected representative’, that is who we are saying is Elisha McCallion. ‘In addition a payment was made to the office of a political party, all three grants have now been repaid, none of the payments were to a person of the same party as the Minister’. So in other words they are saying nobody from within the DUP got it. But again the Department for Economy are not saying when this money was paid back, that is the story. The story is not SF paid the money back, the story is did they only pay it back when they realised that this programme was about to tell the public, ask that question?

CARL

In my view I think it is very evident that, in my view, I am not saying that is the case, but in my view it seems like that is the case. Only once your show exposed the errors in that over £0.5m then it came to light that £30,000 of that was paid in error again to people who shouldn’t have got it.  And I think with your show and the fact that they have refused to inform the taxpaying public of which it’s money was used to pay these people, they refuse to tell when that money was paid back. In my view it is very evident they have scrambled around only after your show exposed the errors in the first place.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Remember one of the other parts of this story that there was and is a huge row going on within the walls of Stormont, there was a statement that was drafted for the Nolan Show, there was a statement that was about to be released, this is what a source has told us and then it was not signed off.

Pat, you are a taxi driver you have been fighting to get other taxi drivers funding, you have been saying the taxi drivers have been without any support for many weeks and months now and now you learn that £10,000 of cash sat in SF’s bank accounts and they won’t say whether they have only paid it back after we started asking questions.

PAT

Absolutely disgusted. You know, we had a meeting yesterday, as you know, with Nichola Mallon, one of the first questions that I asked whenever she said she was putting in place a scheme for taxi drivers, now just taxi drivers, not the owners of depots, just the taxi driver and I asked the question would we be getting what the wind turbines got, £10,000 and she said not a chance. Now she did make a statement to us that said, I could have sorted this out a lot earlier if the other political parties hadn’t been playing political football with you, the Economy wouldn’t take ownership of us. Now the Economy wouldn’t take ownership of the taxi industry to try and help people out in times of a crisis but yet with all they sent £10,000 out to unsolicited people, now straight into their bank accounts. Now if I was sitting and I got £10,000 into my bank account I would think all my Christmases had come at once.

STEPHEN NOLAN

The DfE within its statement has said that they are content that it took the necessary swift action to support tens of thousands of businesses facing serious difficulties or failure caused by Covid. The measures taken by the Minister were approved by the Executive, the department has paid out more than £338m to more than 32,000 businesses across the £10,000 Small Business Support Grant, the 25,000 Retail, Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Grant and the NI Micro-Business Hardship Fund. And they are pointing out the scale of the challenge presented to them by the pandemic, the unprecedented speed and scale of the Executive’s response to it that this was acknowledged by the Comptroller and Auditor General Kieran Donnelly in his NI Audit Office report on 2 September; they are saying that look they did these things at speed to try to get money to companies as quickly as possible, but our story focuses on a political party which has very loudly over the last couple of years demanded respect and integrity from other political parties in NI. In fact SF said they wouldn’t go back into government with the DUP until they were content that the DUP had integrity, so the key question did SF only pay this money back when they realised the Nolan Show was asking? Why won’t they tell us?

PAT

Who is running the country? The Acting Permanent Secretary of Economy NI stated in front of the Economy Committee that there was fraud and there was errors totalling £13.5m.  So as I said to you the other day, this is like a cut in your hand, you are scrapping the top of it and it is getting deeper and deeper and deeper. There is more than £20,000. There is more money paid out to people who don’t deserve it, they weren’t entitled to it and they are probably now hiding under the bed thinking Nolan is coming after me, quick get that money paid back, but £13.5m not £20,000.

STEPHEN NOLAN

SF received £30,000.

PAT

£30,000 but £13.5m Mike Brennan stated, the Acting Permanent Secretary, who is running the DfE, is it Diane Dodds or are the civil servants? If there was a statement ready to go out to the Nolan Show yesterday and it has been vetoed, Diane Dodds didn’t veto it because she has already made a statement to you so these civil servants are doing what they want….

STEPHEN NOLAN

No the civil servants will act under instruction, the question is who stopped the statement going out and why? Let me speak to Daniel McCrossan SDLP MLA.

DANIEL MCCROSSAN

This scheme was designed to support businesses that are in a very difficult situation and have been for a long time. This intervention came about in April, it is now October seven months later why are we only hearing that this money has been paid back if it was received incorrectly by elected representatives. Also I think this will send out a very worrying message to the public that it is one rule for SF and an entirely other rule for everyone else. This scheme was designed at Stormont, the first line in the application process or the criteria stated that elected MLAs and MLAs’ offices could not receive this grant aid, very, very clearly and if SF MLAs were assisting the public in those applications which I in my office have been they would have known that very clearly from the outset…

STEPHEN NOLAN

And they didn’t ask for the money, the money was sent to them automatically, the DfE is saying it was sent to them in error, the key question is when did they pay it back?

DANIEL MCCROSSAN

Yes and that is a very appropriate question given the pressure that our society, our businesses are under at this point in time, that is the question they need to answer, seven months have passed and there has been no attempt to pay it back until attention was drawn by your show this week. I think a lot of the public, particularly throughout…

STEPHEN NOLAN

We don’t know that because they won’t tell us.

DANIEL MCCROSSAN

I think a lot of the public, the businesses in my constituency that are struggling and finding it very difficult whose businesses are closed even as we speak today will find this a shocking revelation and certainly if I had have received it it would have been repaid back straight away because our council are controlled by the constituency. So I can’t understand how a party has received such a lump sum sat for seven months and hasn’t been paid back it doesn’t make any sense.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Well it has now been paid back, SF are telling us, but it is what’s not in their statement we specifically asked them when was it paid back? It is not in their statement, senior Stormont source telling us SF scrambled to pay it back after they heard the Nolan Show telling the public they would be asking if it had been paid back. Now to Mr McHugh this morning, you are a SF MLA, you have said, you have told us that you got notification when you received the £10,000 of our taxpayers’ money are you telling me it is impossible for you, as the person who received this money for you to find out when our taxpayers’ money was paid back to us? So Maoliosa McHugh you have a question to answer to the public this morning. Elisha McCallion did you get the money or not? If you did when did you hand it back? To Diane Dodds the Minister can you shine any light on this Minister? To the civil service in NI, to Stormont, we saw the criticism that you came under from Sir Patrick Coughlin in his report, you promised to reform, what do you know? Tell the public.

DANIEL MCCROSSAN

There is a number of other questions that need to be raised here, Elisha McCallion is no longer elected to the Assembly or Westminster, so where is Elisha McCallion’s office in the Foyle constituency or wherever, where is it generally? Because no one seems to know and I certainly wasn’t aware that Elisha had a public office, so there needs to be questions in relation to that as well. This is really worrying, SF received a donation of £4m last year, this is a party that is extremely wealthy, the wealthiest political party on the island of Ireland. All we are hearing continually is about money and financial scandal and everything else.  What about the ordinary working man and woman out there that are truly struggling in the middle of the worst challenge that our society has faced in living memory?

That is the questions that need to be raised. Elected representatives should be, particularly those elected representatives, one of them sits on the PAC and the Finance Committee, they should know to have returned this a lot sooner, and I have no doubt that when the hair was raised on this that is when this money was attempted to be returned. But that is not the point, the point is that our society is on its knees, people are struggling very, very, very badly, I know, they know, because people are coming to us on a daily basis pleading that their livelihoods are being destroyed, that their businesses are closed, that they don’t know whether they are going to make a decision as to how they keep their families safe or put food on their tables.

That is the decisions that our society are faced with and yet we have a number of elected representatives receiving grant aid from government of £10,000. There is certainly questions about the system and who has received this money generally right across the entirety of the North because there is a significant amount of wastage and there is businesses that have received it and that is very clear from the figures on your show today. But elected representatives certainly this is absolutely unjustifiable and will cause a huge amount of concern in the public domain and it doesn’t matter if it was £10,000 or £2,000 if it shouldn’t have been received it shouldn’t have been received and should have been paid back and that is the key point.

MARTIN

I just would like to say this situation is just indicative of what seems to happen with elected representatives and even unelected public representatives. The electorate rely upon it to get them into their well paid jobs, to do a job for us, they work for us but they seem to very quickly forget that they are answerable to us and it is not unreasonable that the public should require to know the answer to a question such as this and it shows the utter lack of integrity and disrespect and disdain for the public whom they depend upon when they don’t bother to answer or refuse to answer, and as for civil servants, they also seem to forget quite a lot that they work for the public for all the public and they should answer this question. This is public money and has quite rightly been pointed out there are lots of people at the moment in this situation genuinely badly struggling…

STEPHEN NOLAN

For those of you who haven’t been listening to the Nolan Show over recent days, you know, my whole antennae started shaking when, we had asked them to answer the question, what is the total amount of money that was paid back? They didn’t answer it. Did any MLA or MP receive money? They didn’t answer it. Did any MLA or MP that might have received money pay it back? They didn’t answer it. Did they seriously think that we were just going to shrug our shoulders and go ach that is alright then, I will go up and get an ice- cream? Do they know what this programme is about? Why would they not give you the public, it is your money, why would they not tell people like you? Why is SF not telling you when they paid this money back? Were they ever going to pay it back if we hadn’t have asked the question?

MARTIN

Well we don’t know that but the reason I feel they didn’t tell the public is because they lack integrity as a party, as politicians they lack integrity and they don’t think that it is something that we are entitled to know. But I am afraid it is because they are publicly elected representatives and they represent the public and work for the public so they are answerable to us. It is that simple and it is every citizen’s duty, it is every citizen’s duty in a democracy to keep the people who are our elected representatives on their toes and keep them accountable and answerable to us, and to constantly remind them of their duty and their place, they work for us. We are not their vassals.

STEPHEN NOLAN

SF would point out, and this is true, that they never asked for the money it was an unsolicited payment of £10,000, they would point out that they were always going to pay the money back, they would point out that they have paid the money back, but don’t let anything distract you from the key question, did they only pay it back when they realised we were asking them this week if they had done it? There is a hell of a difference if that money was paid back when SF got the money compared to if it was paid back when the public were about to find out, it was still sitting in their bank account if that was the case. Come on SF tell the public. Our political correspondent Enda McClafferty with us, what are your thoughts?

 

ENDA MCCLAFFERTY

Well it is my understanding this money was paid back this week, the £30,000 that you have been referencing that was paid out to the offices of SF elected members and then obviously when it came to light on Monday I think there was a lot of discussion going on behind the scenes and this money was then paid back, if not yesterday then most definitely on Monday afternoon, that is what we are hearing. So it is, I think, as a result of what you have managed to undercover and put in the public domain that has prompted this response. And I also hear as well that there is a lot of hard questions being asked within the party right now as to how this was allowed to happen and how it has come to this particular point and I think there will be a lot of internal wrangling over the course of the next week or two to discover what went wrong here and how in a sense they will be able to try and put things right but it is a mighty big ask because it is not a good look.

STEPHEN NOLAN

And the political reality now for SF is that they have been looking working class people straight in the eye and telling them that they understand how difficult it must be to not have much money that they understand the pain working people will have if they have had their pay cut or lost completely because they have lost their job and meanwhile SF were sitting on £30,000 of public money that they knew they shouldn’t have had.

ENDA MCCLAFFERTY

That is the tricky scenario and they know that right now for instance people are feeling that pain and asking question as to where is their support scheme, where is their financial safety net and they also know for instance the Executive meeting on Thursday this will be raised, this will be discussed and they now at that press conference, if it happens on Thursday afternoon, that there will be some hard questions for whoever appears in front of the cameras representing SF most probably the deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill because, as you say, it is coming at a time whenever people are feeling the pressure and to think that there was £30,000 sitting in bank accounts that have now been paid back but have been sitting there essentially since March. And the question also arises I think as well for those people in charge of the scheme, were they made aware of the fact within weeks that this money had landed in these accounts essentially, what were the systems in place to check what was happening because it was interesting to note from the statement we got today from the DfE just the scale of what went wrong here in terms of the numbers, because they are saying today that 452 payments, including those made to wind turbine owners, out of 24,700 completed payments were paid to people who didn’t deserve to get the cash essentially and they say that over 70 of the 452 have already been paid back.

And there is another issue as well for the other political parties because while we hear them lining up to say that their people are clear, I think we have yet to hear from the DUP by way of a statement but they are telling us that their people are clear. There is an interesting anomaly in all of this because while a politician may be in the clear, we need to find out if their landlord was paid this grant essentially. If their landlord was paid the £10,000 for their premises which they are letting to the politicians because that also should be paid back, that money, so by saying that none of our people were involved, none of our people directly benefited or party didn’t directly benefit, we need to hear if the landlords received this grant because that money will also have to be paid back as well, so that is something I would imagine that the parties will need to step up and answer that question on.

STEPHEN NOLAN

What we have been told by our Stormont source is that there was literally a scramble when they were listening to the programme, the Nolan Show on Monday morning to start to pay this money back and then the DfE don’t release the detail to even say that yes, MLAs and MPs had got it, and the public were not being given that detail and then to this day neither the DfE, nor DoF, nor anybody within SF are admitting to the public that the money was only paid back this week. Who do they think they work for these people? They work for the public.

ENDA MCCLAFFERTY

Paid back yesterday is what I am being told now. Yes and there is this issue as well about what is happening between the DoF and the DfE as to how this information is being put in the public domain because we know there is big tension there behind the scenes, I am being told that the DoF didn’t really get wind of what was being put in the public domain until after 6 o’clock yesterday evening and then there followed then a lot of toing and froing between the various departments right up until before midnight last night and I know those within the DoF are insisting that there was at no stage any attempt to try and hold back this information which was going to be put in the public domain whereas of course you are going to get different stories from different sides in all of this, such as the reality of a five party mandatory coalition with all the political dynamics which are involved behind the scenes in all of this, but we did also see this statement from the DfE today saying that two payments were made in error under the category, one to an elected representative and one to a former elected representative in addition a payment was made to the office of a political party, all three grants have now been repaid and the statement then finishes by saying none of the payments were to a person of the same party as the Minister and that Minister of course is the DUP’s Diane Dodds so there is much more to run on this and the questions I think will just keep on coming.

STEPHEN NOLAN

The reality is the DfE aren’t even saying here it is SF that got it, they are describing it as to the office of ‘a’ political party and they are saying ‘a’ current elected representative, it is SF. Why would the DfE not just tell the public it is SF?

ENDA MCCLAFFERTY

We don’t know that because, you know because you have spoken to him, Maoliosa McHugh was the elected representative who received this money into his West Tyrone office essentially into the bank account there and the former elected representative we don’t know but you have already been in touch with Elisha McCallion to find out if it is her offices in Derry that are responsible here, but the DfE I think is treading a very careful line here, they are not naming people, they are not identifying parties in their statement because obviously they know that relations behind the scene are pretty fraught right now and I think that is why they haven’t gone that step further to start pointing the finger in a very official way as to who was at fault here.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Something happened between Sunday night and Monday morning, because this programme had questions into them and we have it from multiple sources that there was a detailed statement drafted and then that detailed statement was not passed on to the Nolan Show and on Tuesday morning we got one line talking about anaerobic generators and the whole question around MLAs and MPs, not a word of it was in there.

ENDA MCCLAFFERTY

What we are being told is that part of the problem was that there was a line in that statement apparently which referenced the fact that no member of the minister’s parties were involved in this essentially and that is what was proving problematic, now that is one version of events, another version of events is that it all came very late to the other department and hence they needed more time to study the facts and figures around all of this to be sure that they were in a sound place before they were going to be releasing anything publicly. So you are going to get two version of a story here, such is the nature of our politics in Stormont at the moment.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Brian Donaldson is from Excluded NI.

BRIAN DONALDSON

Stormont keeps on giving to you doesn’t it? It keeps giving you stories.

STEPHEN NOLAN

The point is it didn’t give us this story we had to go and dig and dig for it and dig more.

BRIAN DONALDSON

I think Enda made a made a massive point and every MLA up and down this country leases their property, very few own their property, so if I was an MLA now I would be finding out if my landlord got £10,000 because I am sure the Stephen Nolan Show will find out exactly which landlords got that £10,000. And you are talking about MLAs that are fighting for Excluded NI’s cause and telling us that things are terrible and we should get this money and you could very well find out that the landlords that they rent their property off got £10,000 for now reason whenever it was illegal to get it. So that to me is a big issue arising from this, I don’t think it is just three, I just think they were just three offices that were owned by the person that is in them….

STEPHEN NOLAN

We don’t know that and we have no evidence to back any of that up and I am more comfortable sticking to what we do know. How do you think it will make your members feel, the clues is in the title of your organisation, Excluded NI, your members feel that they were excluded from public funding to support them through Covid and now we know that SF sat on £30,000 of public money that they should never have had?

BRIAN DONALDSON

We fought for six, seven months to get support and even turn a minister’s head to say that we are worth this support and now that you hear that they are getting the support through the back door themselves, whether it be accidentally or not it, just shows you they don’t have any control over the public purse which is worrying because the public purse is there to help us. I have people on the phone every night that are struggling with mental health issues because they don’t feel valued in society but yet those that are above us seem to be more valued than others. So it is getting to the stage where it is a disgrace. The schemes that were announced need to be rolled out and the people of NI need to be able to get that support and they need to get it quick.

STEPHEN NOLAN

The leader of the TUV, Jim Allister, what does this tell you about how NI works?


JIM ALLISTER

It is quite appalling that any MLA would benefit and then procrastinate over returning the money and it does seem that the catalyst for the return was the Nolan Show, it seems that if you had never asked the questions this money would still be resting in the accounts of SF. But I think there are….

STEPHEN NOLAN

Mr McHugh would deny that and would say that he immediately asked for the money to be returned, Elisha McCallion just hasn’t spoken to us, so we don’t know….

JIM ALLISTER

Let’s deal with Mr McHugh, Mr McHugh knows the money went in does he not control his own bank account in terms of being able to then decree that the money shall go back? If he says it should have gone back and it didn’t go back who controls his account? Mr McHugh says he had some difficulties finding out how to get it back or who to get it back to….

STEPHEN NOLAN
No he said the organisers had difficulties contacting LPS. I googled it and from May on the NI Direct website there was a clear email address where you could simply email them if you wanted to hand the money back.

JIM ALLISTER

Of course, but if he did have any difficulties, Mr McHugh serves on the Finance Committee as I do, three times we have had the head of the LPS before us, twice in the last months, if Mr McHugh had any questions about how you get money back to LPS he had the perfect direct opportunity to ask, he didn’t take it. So once more we have SF playing fast and loose with public money. And let me remind your listeners it is not so many years ago since £700,000 of taxpayer’s money was syphoned off into Research Services Ireland, a SF front organisation for alleged research that nobody could find any trace of. SF has form on this and to now find that at this most perilous time for many people, individuals and businesses, that £30,000 was resting in their accounts all this time only to be paid back when the public spotlight comes upon it I think is quite appalling and of course is a very telling insight into the real SF.

STEPHEN NOLAN

To this day, to this very moment neither the DfE nor the DoF will tell the public when that money, their money was repaid, we the BBC are telling the public. No department within Stormont is telling the public what they have done when they got their money back, they won’t tell them.

JIM ALLISTER

LPS lies within the DoF, the Minister for the DoF is Conor Murphy, Conor Murphy at the stroke of a pen could direct this information be released, why has he not done that? Why is a SF Minister not coming clean on telling when the money was paid back to LPS…

STEPHEN NOLAN

He would object to the term coming clean and this is….

JIM ALLISTER

Well has he told you?

STEPHEN NOLAN

No he has not.

JIM ALLISTER

Isn’t that the point? It is his department, it is an agency within his department which would be the recipient of the payback so he knows when it came back and he could tell you why is he not telling you?

STEPHEN NOLAN

We know, by the way, that DoF and the Minister Conor Murphy knew about the recipients of this grant, knew about the SF recipients on Monday, so we know that they knew about it on Monday and then the statement that came from the DfE on Tuesday didn’t talk about it.

JIM ALLISTER

Where is the statement from the DoF? Why are we not hearing from the Minister and his department who controls….

STEPHEN NOLAN

We have heard from them, they have simply answered our questions, we had asked why did the Finance Minister fail to sign off on drafted answers from the Economy Minister, because this is what we are being told, in response to this programme’s questions on Small Business Grant payments, so that it could have been released when the Economy Minister wanted it to be, that is what a source has told us what happened and the response from DoF, the DoF received a draft response after 6pm and responded within hours.

JIM ALLISTER

Yes but the DoF has not made a statement to you or to the public saying this is the date, the time when we received back these payments….

STEPHEN NOLAN

Correct.

JIM ALLISTER

They know the answer to that, why are they hiding it? I think the public have every entitlement to be very wary with the obfuscation and the delaying tactics and the cover-ups which keep emerging out of Stormont and really.

STEPHEN NOLAN

I have no doubt that they would object to the work cover-up….

JIM ALLISTER

Nothing from RHI, nothing it seems.

STEPHEN NOLAN

What should happen now?

JIM ALLISTER

I think first of all Mr McHugh needs to be referred to the Standards Commissioner for his failure, knowing he had money which he wasn’t entitled to, to make sure it was paid back. I think….

STEPHEN NOLAN

Well he said he requested it be paid back immediately.


JIM ALLISTER

But he knew it wasn’t paid back that is the point….

STEPHEN NOLAN

No he has told us he doesn’t know when it was paid back.

JIM ALLISTER

He doesn’t know, then that is back to my question who controls his account? It is his office account, does the MLA not control it? If he doesn’t control it who does control it and why would someone else control it? I think those are the questions which emerge endlessly out of this and I think it is back to the sort of saga we had with Research Services Ireland where MLAs from SF were claiming thousands of pounds for alleged research that they never saw apparently and into an organisation which was run by the financial managers of SF, £700,000 creamed off which was never paid back and now £30,000 which one might speculate would never have been paid back but for the Nolan Show.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Well we don’t know that.

WILLIAM

Every morning when I listen to the show I have to check the calendar to make sure it is not the 1 April, because we are just lurching from one scenario to another to another. It is unbelievable. I can’t wait until the Blame Game starts again, they have that much material to use.

STEPHEN NOLAN

How does this make you feel as a citizen?

WILLIAM

Ridiculous. Who do you trust or who do you listen to? People are telling you one thing and then every day there is something else popping up and you can’t keep up with this. The country is in ruin.

STEPHEN NOLAN

What would you say to SF this morning?

WILLIAM

Come clean, tell the truth. They always want people to tell the truth but sure they won’t tell the truth about anything. They have had 30 years, 40 years….

STEPHEN NOLAN

That is not fair is it? They are certainly not telling you when this money was paid back, they are completely avoiding that question from central command they are avoiding that question and Mr McHugh says he doesn’t know when the money he received came back out.

WILLIAM

Well I think if somebody put £100 into my account, £100 now, I would know when it went in, I would to know who it come from and it wouldn’t be resting in my account too long. It is like that episode in Father Ted where Father Ted says "it was only resting in my account". You could write another episode of Father Ted the stuff that is going on. Unbelievable.

STEPHEN NOLAN

And Elisha McCallion, silence from Elisha McCallion, did you get £10,000 of taxpayers’ money? No suggestion that you asked for it, was it sent in by error to your account and if it was did you only pay it back last night? Did you only pay it back this week, when did you pay it back Elisha?

STEPHEN NOLAN

Andrew Muir from the Alliance Party, what does this do for trust in politics?

ANDREW MUIR

It doesn’t do very much does it, I think there is serious questions need to be answered in relation to this. I can remember when this grant, you probably remember as well when this grant scheme was announced and there was many businesses and individuals in desperate need of assistance and it did assist them but it was very specific at the very beginning that MLA offices and MP offices were to be excluded, it was very, very clear at the very, very start that would be the case. So to hear this stuff today is appalling it really is and these questions need answered and they need answered today.

STEPHEN NOLAN

But there is a system within government to answer these questions, again I remind you and every other elected representative you all work for the public, so we have asked the departments, run by the civil service, when was this money issued, when was it paid back? DfE won’t tell us when it was paid back, DoF won’t tell us when it was paid back. What about transparency in government?

ANDREW MUIR

I entirely agree and these will be the questions that I will be asking and ensuring to get answers to it. It is an honour and a privilege to represent the people and as part of that there needs to be openness and transparency in politics and stuff like today does not help, that it needs to be addressed and these are the questions that I will be seeking answers to, it is important that those issues are addressed and if £10,000 appeared in my bank account I think I would know about it pretty quickly and it is important that that money should have been passed back straight away, it shouldn’t have been paid in the first place, the first element and if anyone had received that it should have been passed back straight away.

STEPHEN NOLAN

As well as Mr McHugh we are told, it is interesting by the way isn’t it that the three payments that were paid in error were all paid to SF?  That is obviously just some type of coincidence but it is interesting that all three payments were paid to SF. Again the DfE not telling the public that it was SF related people that got the money but we are telling you it was. Elisha McCallion, we understand received a £10,000 payment, she won’t tell the public whether she did or she didn’t, we understand she scrambled this week to pay it back, she won’t say anything about that, won’t confirm or deny it, nor will her party make comment, this is public money.

ANDREW MUIR

It is and what has been reported today is a matter of serious concern and the individuals that you are discussing and the parties need to be able to answer those questions that have been posed and they need to answer those today.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Mairia Cahill with us today, your thoughts Maria?

MAIRIA CAHILL

I think it is incumbent upon SF to produce a proper timeline and answer of this. What happened to transparency and accountability, respect, equality and integrity, these are all buzz words that SF have been using for the last load of months…So really what they should be doing is answering your questions and being completely transparent about it.

STEPHEN NOLAN

They have known about us asking these questions for a number of days now and they have chosen to withhold the information from the public, they are refusing to tell the public when they paid this money back and the Nolan Show is reporting and it is the BBC reporting that they started to pay it back this week after they knew we were onto it.

MAIRIA CAHILL

Well it looks completely ridiculous doesn’t it, it looks like there has been a lack of transparency here and they could clear it up fairly quickly.  I know there is quite a lot of interest in your story this morning because I am just keeping an anecdotal eye on the southern end of things, so Elisha McCallion in particular is a senator in Dublin, so it beholds the question why payments from the North’s public funds were going to her directly in the first place? So I think there is more in this story to come and they could probably stop it at this point by just being as transparent as they should be.

STEPHEN NOLAN

What does this do for that working man or woman that is out working long shifts two and three jobs to try to pay the bills here and they find out that SF sat on this money and then won’t even admit it?

MAIRIA CAHILL

I am just not sure how it happened, that is why I am calling for more transparency around it, I would like to see before I point an accusing finger at them, but on the face of it, it looks like they have only moved very swiftly there because they were being found out about it, that to me is not a party that is acting with integrity on this issue and particularly given that the money is Covid money, this was, emergency money in order as you say to help struggling people. I think there are quite a lot of people whose businesses are out of action at the minute who will be very, very angry around this.

STEPHEN NOLAN

And then those, that machinery of government, Stormont, we were having to squeeze and squeeze the information out of them and even when press statements were written, the drafts were written, they still weren’t issued.

MAIRIA CAHILL

It doesn’t really say much for the New Decade, New Deal, New Approach tagline that everybody was using this time last year in order to get Stormont back in the first place. I think there needs to be a whole culture change within the people on the hill at the minute in terms of how they actually don’t show contempt for the public by being completely transparent because that is what it seems like at the minute that it is these little people who are asking all of these questions and the people responsible for it will all scurry away and keep the information out. That is probably not the case but that is what the perception of it is and there just needs to be a complete overhaul of this. This all started originally in terms of lack of transparency for me around the PPE order, which may have had had nothing wrong with it whatsoever, but the perception and secrecy around it from the DoF was the issue there and I think at this point in time here is another one now on top of this. The public are right then to be asking the questions, if this is what we are hearing about what are we not hearing about…?

STEPHEN NOLAN

We did ask the Finance Minister and his officials why they failed to sign off on drafted answers from the Economy Minister in response to questions that we had put in on the Small Business Grant payments, the DoF told us that they received a draft response after 6pm and responded within hours. They said the department was being transparent and they said the Minister, Conor Murphy, became aware of this on Monday and indeed his department were aware of it on the same day.

As we close our programme today there remain questions for Elisha McCallion who has not yet even admitted or denied or confirmed that she received this money, she has not denied or confirmed that she started to try and pay it back this week, we understand the money has been paid back this week for all of the wrongful payments that were made and Maoliosa McHugh, he doesn’t know, he claims, when the money went back. I am sure more questions will be asked around that as well.

 

TRANSCRIPT 2

Programme: Nolan Show

Date & Time: 26.10.2020

Subject: Wind Turbine Payments

Prepared By -

Typist: Donna Morris

MMU: PF

 

STEPHEN NOLAN

We are going to tell you a story and it involves another big pay out by Stormont’s economy department to people already benefiting from an excessively generous renewable energy scheme. This isn’t RHI, this time it is all about owners of wind turbines. In the old children’s programme Camberwick Green Windy Millar had trouble making ends meet, the owners of wind turbines in NI seem to have had no such trouble. An Audit Office report recently found that stand alone wind turbines received excessive subsidies from people’s electric bills. And to give you an idea how much money that is the report gave details of one example involving a turbine that could earn a subsidy of at least £95,000 a year. It said the owners in that case would be able to pay back their £300,000 investment within four years and still benefit from 16 further years of very lucrative payments.

The scheme that laid to those latest five figure payments was announced with plenty of publicity by the Economy Minister, Diane Dodds.

DIANE DODDS

At present we hold bank details for about 7,000 small businesses who qualify for receipt of this grant. In order to facilitate the collection of the required details for the remainder an online web portal has now opened.

STEPHEN NOLAN

What the Economy Minister hasn’t been so keen to share up to now is that her department seems to have blown a lot of that money by sending it to some of the owners of wind turbines and no one seems to know how their businesses could have been affected or in any way damaged by Covid restrictions. Here is the way the small business support grant scheme worked, you qualified for a £10,000 payment if you were already receiving small business rates relief and if you paid business rates by direct debit the money was automatically sent to your back account whether you asked for it or not. And for a number of owners of wind turbines that was quite a windfall, a bit like winning the lottery but in this case you didn’t even know you had entered.

A Nolan Show investigation has established a total of £520,000 was shared out among those 52 wind turbine owners. Wait for this, it was only after the money was in their bank accounts that the DfE decided that they had got it wrong and that wind turbines should actually be ineligible for the scheme. So how did those owners get the cash in the first place, what does the department intend to do to get out public money back and will there be any blow back for officials or indeed Minister Dodds?

In a statement to the Nolan Show a spokesperson for the DfE said they are trying to recoup that money, the questions remain as to whether that is even going to be possible. Diane Dodds’ department said ‘the initial payment method was agreed by the Executive’, they said that a review ‘determined that owners of wind turbines would not have experienced financial hardship as a result of the Covid-19 crisis’. The department therefore made the decision that wind turbines would not be eligible for support on the scheme. The department will, where possible, seek to recover any funding that may have been paid to those deemed ineligible to receive payment.

And I hope you have clocked the key phrase in that, where possible they will try to seek to recover the money. How is it going to be possible when they sent them the £10,000 cash in the first place? Remember because Stormont screwed up they only made wind turbine owners ineligible for the payment weeks after they had actually stuck it into their bank accounts, so how on earth is it going to be possible to get the money back?

There are still many questions to answer about how once again Stormont has managed to make a mess of the initiative that has improperly handed over big money to a renewable energy scheme and remember the big question, who is going to take responsibility for this latest cock up and is the public going to get their money back?

Leader of the TUV Jim Allister with us this morning, your reaction to this?

JIM ALLISTER

Well it is quite absurd that anyone at any stage could have thought that money which was to rejuvenate businesses which had suffered loss of income over Covid that anyone owning a wind turbine could be in that position, it is absolutely absurd to think that anyone ever thought that. So it is both absurd and it is extremely careless that the money was paid out.  The reason why it was paid out is that the Executive adopted a scheme whereby anyone and everyone who was in receipt of small business rates relief if they paid their rates by direct debit they automatically received the £10,000 straight into their bank account, if they didn’t pay by direct debit they had to apply for it. This only came to light as I understand it when some wind turbine owners who discovered that their neighbours had got it and one such constituent came to me, then started themselves to apply for it and then the department realised what they had done and stopped the payments and said we would like the money back but getting the money back seems like a pipe dream because this was unsolicited payments to these people and I think it is down to their conscience as to whether it is returned. But the fundamental question for me in all of this is: why were wind turbines ever in receipt of small business rates relief?

There is a list of exclusions from small business rates relief. It includes for example people who have got telecommunication masts, well what is the difference, why were wind turbines not on the excluded list for small business rates relief? And I know that anaerobic-digesters are not on the list of exclusions, so I do suspect that they also got it because business rates are a rate for all non-domestic properties capable of producing and income and a wind turbine is capable of producing an income, that is why it pays business rates, an anaerobic-digester is in the same category that is why, I suspect it pays business rates but they should have both been excluded from the small business rates relief scheme.

STEPHEN NOLAN

I will pick up on that point in a second but curiously we asked the DfE at the same time that we asked them about the wind turbines, we asked them at exactly the time about the anaerobic-digesters, they answered one part of it, they answered the wind turbine part of it and they have so far not answered the anaerobic-digesters so what is going on? Has there been more money, how much money has been spent on those and are they trying to claw that back as well?

JIM ALLISTER

Those are questions that must be answered but I think going forward there needs to be a radical review as to why wind turbines and anaerobic-digesters if they get rates relief are on the small business rates relief scheme, I just don’t see the justification for them being there….

STEPHEN NOLAN

What is your threshold for justification, how do you determine who is deserving of it and who isn’t?

JIM ALLISTER

Because the very nature of those schemes is they get other subsidies. A wind turbine gets what is called ROCs, Renewable Obligation Certificates that means for every kilowatt of electricity they produce they are paid for it so they are already heavily subsidised as the Audit Report showed to the tune of £5bn by UK electricity consumers. So I don’t see why an industry which is so subsidised should also be entitled to small business rates relief…totally in congress.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Do MLAs get small business rates relief?

JIM ALLISTER

They do but they were excluded from this scheme I can tell you that, certainly I know my office received nothing and I do recall reading within the fine print an inclusion in respect of MLAs’ offices, as there should have been of course an inclusion in that regard.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Were they excluded from the beginning or was money sent, do you know this is what we are asking was money sent automatically at the very beginning to MLAs as well?

JIM ALLISTER

I don’t believe so, certainly I can only speak from my own experience, certainly my office received no money and I wouldn’t have expected to.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Do you pay by direct debit?

JIM ALLISTER

No I don’t pay by direct debit….

STEPHEN NOLAN

What they did was at the very beginning of this everybody who paid by direct debit that is who they sent £10,000 to.

JIM ALLISTER

Yes that is right, it is conceivable, I am just working from my own experience, it is conceivable on that basis that MLAs could have got it. I would be utterly scandalised if any MLA received that and didn’t instantly return it because it would be quite outrageous with our constituents in the state they are in and with our office rent paid and our rates paid by the state, never forget this part of the funding package for MLAs offices is that you get an allowance to pay your rates, you can hardly get an allowance or pay your rates and then get your rates refunded to you or get effectively what is a subsidy because of the government paying your rates. So it would be absolutely on both levels astounding and scandalous if that happened.

STEPHEN NOLAN

We only put a question, I want to be as fair as possible, we only put a question in around the MLAs and MPs last night so the department to be fair to them need more time to answer that but we have asked them, did any MLAs or MPs receive this money and if so we have then further asked the, did those MLAs or MPs avail of the opportunity which is written into this scheme to pay the money back. Have you got sympathy for the department who were trying to get money out the door as quickly as possible to legitimate business?

JIM ALLISTER

I certainly have sympathy on the basis that there was a huge pressure to save as much as we could in the economy and essential to that was keeping businesses alive and therefore the £10,000 and the £25,000 payment schemes were good schemes, they were generous they were necessary and I understand therefore the compulsion to get that money out the door as quickly as possible, what I don’t understand is why no one thought to check that everyone on the small business rates relief would be a legitimate recipient?

STEPHEN NOLAN

That is the story isn’t it? It would only have taken them a couple of days to do a quick scan through and spot things like wind turbines, what difference would a few days have made?

JIM ALLISTER

I would have thought they must have this on some sort of IT system where they could identify the nature of each business and I would have thought immediately you saw wind turbine you thought well they don’t need any money and shouldn’t be getting any. So I would have thought the exclusion which did come about a couple of weeks later should have been operative from day one and I think it was carelessness not to have done that and of course the person who pays for that is you and me the taxpayer, £0.5m is gone. There are 404 single wind turbines in NI, 52 of them have had this £10,000 and that is 52 that should never have had it. But I do come back to my point I question why any of the 404 are on the small business rates relief scheme?

STEPHEN NOLAN

The UUP MLA Roy Beggs with us this morning, the public are angry, very angry…

ROY BEGGS

And rightly so. Many have suffered and for that matter many continue to suffer without any financial support, a wide range of occupations, taxi drivers, coach drivers, hauliers, hairdressers, barbers they are shut down a second time already and if they had not been paying rates, they had been working from home etc what help have they had? So therefore when money has been given out to those who have already been heavily subsidised everyone is angry and rightly so. But why was there not a basic question asked?  It is important that the support went out quickly because businesses were in a real crisis so we have to acknowledge that but you could have had a very simple application form simply requiring people to justify that their business had been significantly adversely affected by the shut down and the vast majority of people that would have been very easy to prove. Wind farms, the wind kept turning, the money kept coming in from the grid, frankly unbelievable that no one in LPS and the department and the Minister didn’t think to ask is there anyone that shouldn’t be getting it automatically.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Maybe they did ask that and they thought that look on the balance of what there was to be gained get the money out the door and more people, more deserving people will benefit from this and there will be some loss where money shouldn’t have gone to some people but at least decent, hardworking businesses will survive the early stages of that pandemic? Maybe that is what happened here?

ROY BEGGS

I suspect that has been part of it but why has it been hidden, why if that was what happened and could be justified to a certain extent why has there not been transparency about it? You are talking about wind farms here, wind turbines, possibly anaerobic-digesters, what about solar farms connected to the grid? What about mobile phone masts are we paying the mobile phone operators, initially I don’t think you are entitled to multiple payments but did they pay some of them?

STEPHEN NOLAN

Jim Allister I think said mobile phones masts were excluded but look, we will wait and hear from the department. Did you ask a question around some of this, is that right?

ROY BEGGS

Early in September there was a date, myself and my colleague John Stewart we were highlighting the need to do something for the excluded, everyone who has not received any support from the public purse whose work had ceased, because they were self-employed, didn’t have rateable premises they were at that stage certainly not included in any scheme and some still have to receive support as you were talking to taxi drivers earlier on in your show. So we were highlighting the debate those who have been excluded from support and I did pose the question because I had heard anecdotal evidence that wind turbines might be entitled to this and I posed that in the course of the debate in the Assembly….

STEPHEN NOLAN

And what was the answer?

ROY BEGGS

The Minister didn’t respond during the course of the debate. Maybe she just wanted to keep it hidden, I don’t know why she didn’t respond. Frequently when the Minister is unable to respond to all the queries that are raised during a debate subsequently you would be contacted and the questions would be answered, certainly that did not happen in this case.

 
STEPHEN NOLAN

Brian Donaldson from Excluded NI. Your thoughts?

BRIAN DONALDSON

I suppose I can answer the question for you straight away on how much is the fraud, I would watch the NI Economy Committee meeting every Wednesday and Mike Brennan the Public Secretary gave a statement which I have tweeted to you, it is a video it is his actual words from the department that they think that there is £13.5m that has been paid out in fraud…..

STEPHEN NOLAN

But this is not fraud of course, this is different, this is the DfE putting money into people’s bank accounts even when they didn’t ask for it.

BRIAN DONALDSON

That is it paid out in error, error/fraud so there is £13.5m has left the department. Now you look at that in any sector, take child care, child care got paid £300 each for the work that they done to keep the NHS staff going, going into work to save lives and we gave them £300 each and we give wind farms £10,000. And it is not only wind farms, there is £13.5m has gone out of that department and do you know what we can beat Diane Dodds up all we want, the person that puts Diane Dodds in that position of power is where the blame lies. She should never have been in that position and she was put in there by Arlene Foster and how many more times can Arlene Foster let this country down, whether it be RHI, whether it be wind turbines..

STEPHEN NOLAN

Diane Dodds is a very experienced politician, why should she not be in that role?

BRIAN DONALDSON

I think it has shown that she is maybe a bit out of her depth with things, in the middle of a pandemic….

STEPHEN NOLAN

This was signed off by the Executive this scheme.

BRIAN DONALDSON

There we go again, it is up the road to Arlene. The blame has to lie with the leader of the party, the people she puts in position and these mistakes keep coming out of the DfE. There is 1,000 people work in the DfE, taxpayers money pays for 1,000 people to work in that department and they can’t get stuff right. It is not £500,000 this is £13.5m…..

STEPHEN NOLAN

They were trying to get money out as quickly as possible in an unprecedented situation where businesses were failing, good businesses have the potential to fail because of an unknown virus, let’s remember the context here.

BRIAN DONALDSON

I know but there is 1,000 people work there, I could get stuff out quickly with 3, 4, 5, 6 people and there would be errors but there is 1,000 people in that department working. There just shouldn’t be those sort of errors, there shouldn’t be £13m error, it just shouldn’t happen regardless of the (unclear) they don’t lose their money if they make these errors. There is nobody to hold the Permanent Secretary to account because there is no head of the civil service.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Bob McCoubrey from Mourne Seafood, business across the country Bob when they are hearing this story this morning and they have been trying to fight to get money, what are your thoughts?

BOB MCCOUBRY

I would like to say I am surprised but I am not really surprised, I think the whole problem came down to the way they decided to measure the size of your business was by going by the rates that you pay which is clearly non- seneschal. The Mourne Seafood Bar in Belfast employs 25 people and just because we came in under the 15,000nav we got a £10,000 grant, small butcher shops who weren’t really impacted, they only got £25,000 grant and traded away quite successfully. The £10,000 that we got we spent it plus another £5,000 on creating an outside area, which in all the research that I have seen is a safe dining, hospitality area and that has been closed down. So you know I am just, well you don’t know what to say do you?

STEPHEN NOLAN

They tried to get money out to businesses as soon as possible, what we are saying today is why didn’t they spend a few days making checks so that businesses which obviously were ineligible didn’t have money automatically thrown into their bank account. And by the way there are two tiers here, there are people if they were paying by direct debit they got the money and even people in the same business who were not paying by direct debit, the same line of business, they didn’t get it automatically .

BOB MCCOUBRY

It is crazy I could have given them last year’s VAT returns, any company could have done that and they could have judged your needs based on that, they could have said look this company turns over £1.5m what is the point of giving them £10,000 grant to keep them going? It just doesn’t make any sense and to give it to wind farms, it is just unbelievable. There is so many people out there that I know taxi drivers, window cleaners, hairdressers who haven’t received a penny through all this.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Anaerobic-digesters they haven’t answered the question, did they give it to them too?

BOB MCCOUBRY

It is crazy but that is LPS, they are just, I don’t know what to say any more.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Caroline McComb from McComb Bus Tours, we have been contacted by businesses throughout the country I suspect the Minister Diane Dodds is going to have to make some type of statement beyond what she already has let’s see if she does, but there is significant feedback now from businesses and members of the public across the country, what are your thoughts?

CAROLINE MCCOMB

Our overriding feeling really is of frustration, we are eight months into the pandemic now and basically haemorrhaging money. A coach company is a very, very expensive business to keep alive whether you are operating or not. Our fixed costs are colossal. Just before the pandemic struck we spent

£0.25m on a brand new full sized coach and because of the issues with the MoT centres we couldn’t even get that coach through its initial road worthy test. So it sat gathering dust until September and even now that we have got it tested it has been deemed suitable to use for the carriage of people, it has probably done about six jobs because with the closure now especially of hotels, restaurants, visitor attractions there are no tourists who want to or are able to come here to avail of services, like what we offer.

STEPHEN NOLAN

And when you have been hearing our reporting today, what are your thoughts?

CAROLINE MCCOMB

Again frustration, just constant frustration of trying to bang down the doors of Stormont for recognition for the industries who have been completely forgotten about and set aside and not recognised for what they do give to the business community and the community as a whole…

STEPHEN NOLAN

Meanwhile they were throwing £10,000 to wind turbines

CAROLINE MCCOMB

I can’t knock industries who have a genuine need for funding and who get it, but we have a genuine need for funding and we are not getting it.

STEPHEN NOLAN

I have been speaking to Marcus Leroux about this, he is a journalist at Sourced Material, I began by asking Marcus to give us a sense of the totality of this scheme and where he thinks the holes are in it?

MARCUS LEROUX

STEPHEN NOLAN

So did you not need planning to put these wind mills in your garden, your field?

MARCUS LEROUX

You needed planning but you didn’t need planning to start claiming subsidies; that was the key problem. On anaerobic-digestion for example getting planning permission for a small farm scale anaerobic-digestion plant that would take farm waste from that farm and nowhere else, put it into one of these anaerobic- digesters, a dome where it is broken, the waste material is broke up into methane and then used to generate supposedly renewable electricity. What actually transpired was a much larger installation than the planners had bargained for, that the local community had bargained for and even when the local authorities and the council turned around and said guys this isn’t what we gave you approval for and there is an enforcement notice there is no mechanism for Ofgem to say well if this is effectively an illegal operation you shouldn’t be claiming public subsidies….

STEPHEN NOLAN

Ah come on you are joking…..

MARCUS LEROUX

It is all in the audit office report, it is an extraordinary situation. When I was going around speaking to some of the people affected, some of the communities, I was shocked, you hear a lot of things and a lot of accusations as a journalist and a lot of them don’t turn out to be exactly as sold on closer examination but this one surprisingly for me did just seem to be completely (unclear)

STEPHEN NOLAN

Let me just get this right, they had nothing built into this scheme so that if someone was contravening planning illegally having this machine on their site they had built nothing into the scheme so that they could stop the payments to the illegal operation? Come on you have got to be winding me up?

MARCUS LEROUX

If you don’t believe me have a look at the Audit Office report it is all in there and it occurred both on the small scale wind turbine side and on the AD the anaerobic-digestion side….

STEPHEN NOLAN

And the public’s money of course in this overly generous scheme, nowhere else in the UK would you get this type of return but of course here in NI money was so plentiful, our money, our public money was so plentiful what have the Executive decided to give these people? Here is how the report summed up what was available to at least one recipient. So it costs them about £300,000 to put the operation in, they got that back within four years and then for 16 years after that they were making close to £100,000 a year of our money.

MARCUS LEROUX

A return of about 20% for the small scale wind farms above a kind of notional benchmark of about ten so yes free money and if you look at the anaerobic- digestion side it is very, very similar.

STEPHEN NOLAN

You see this anaerobic-digestion malarkey is that just fancy words for we were using our public taxpayers money to steam off crap?

MARCUS LARUE

A lot of crap, a lot of grass, a lot of chicken poos….

Steam it off, and they are handing somebody £100,000 a year?

MARCUS LEROUX

For the standard size of AD plants the subsidies would be more like £0.5m a year. Now if you look at….

STEPHEN NOLAN

Captured of course and turned it into biogas to be fair to them; that is what it was for.

MARCUS LARUE

That is the point it is turned into bio-gas which gets rid of methane true but then of course once your burn methane you have still got carbon dioxide but we leave that aside. The key problem is the waste matter, it is the nitrogen-rich, ammonia-rich digestant which is left at the end of the process, so it was sold in NI back in the day as a solution to NI’s waste problem particularly a chicken litter problem.  We couldn’t get rid of all of the chicken litter we were producing largely because we have got Moy Park and the problem is that all of the phosphates and the nitrates that are in the litter are still there in the digest at the end of the process and you have got NI has the UK’s worst situation for nitrogen pollution in the UK as I said earlier something like 95% of vulnerable protected sites….

STEPHEN NOLAN

Now that the Audit Report has established that there was just too much of our money being paid out, people were getting too good a return on this, where have we heard that before, is there any attempt to claw any of our money back or are we going to be doling this money out for another 15/16 years to some people?

MARCUS LEROUX

I have come across so far one case on the anaerobic-digestion side where there is a significant attempt to claw back money from one particular operator, but obviously that is bad activity at the margins and this is a systemic issue.

Mick Fealty from Slugger O’Toole with us this morning.

What do you make of this, on the one hand the department trying to get money out quickly on the other hand could they not have checked who they were giving our money to before they sent it into people’s bank accounts?

 
MICK FEALTY

Just to take a cue from that last thing that Marcus said, governments are not really good at dealing with systemic issues like this, in fact generally speaking and this is not just true of the NI civil service, they tend to take a systematic approach, almost an automatic approach to any problem that it has to deal with so they use departmental procedures, not only to help ministers make big decisions but also how they deploy solutions and I thought actually the gentleman from Mourne Seafood Bar really pointed out there that in some respects they made decisions that were easy for them as the department but not necessarily decisions that would actually create good outcomes. You heard the DoF making decisions about where the cut off is as to whether someone could get and so this is a civil servant problem as much as it is a political problem. The problem is that civil servants all over the world really aren’t really interested in getting feedback on the decisions that they make inside and so some of the stuff that you are getting through your programme this morning is feedback but it is too late for many of the people that are…

STEPHEN NOLAN

Human nature goes, it must be galling for those people who have been big time struggling over recent weeks and they are trying to understand that the system needs to process their application because it is public money and they hear about this?

MICK FEALTY

I don’t think it is just galling I think actually what you have uncovered is a degree of stress amongst those people who haven’t been able to access this. We saw this in the US, the whole issue about direct debit, where you already gave an easy access to government, government also have easy access to you and it is easier for them to drop money down into your lap because at some level you have gone through a series of checks and balances to make sure that you are, this is the assumption, I am not saying it is true in every case but if you are a taxi driver or a food retailer and you don’t fit in that then as far as the government officials are concerned you really don’t exist.

STEPHEN NOLAN

I am sure they would dispute that, Gerry Carroll from PBP, your thoughts on this?

GERRY CARROLL

What I was saying was the whole way Stormont has handled the pandemic has been disastrous, people have been left without any support and we have heard some of those people this morning on your show.  But the question I would ask is obviously this is through in a way through the small business grant but you saw through RHI not only over payment for some people but a real biased support towards big corporations and big companies getting support schemes through the government, so I would ask around this, is it a case of large landowners getting grants when they shouldn’t have been, corporations getting grants when they shouldn’t have been, these are the questions which have to be asked. Obviously wind turbines have to exist on a large plot of land so to me I don’t know how they have been described as small businesses. There needs to be some clarity on that and also I think there is a bit of true to form here with the DUP ministers how they have handled environmental schemes in the past.

STEPHEN NOLAN

Stephen Farry Alliance, your reaction very quickly?

STEPHEN FARRY

Clearly this is a very awkward embarrassing situation, not least given the previous scandals that have been in certain areas….

STEPHEN NOLAN

The Executive signed it off.

STEPHEN FARRY

I think there is a need for some perspective as well at the same time in that this was something that was rushed through. Remember decisions were taken here in the teeth of the corona crisis….