FOI 54-26: A request for information regarding any payments made to Jeffrey Donaldson since his resignation as an MLA
Information Standards Freedom of Information Response
Our ref: FOI 54-26
19 August 2026
Freedom of Information Act 2000
I am writing to confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission (Assembly Commission) has processed your request dated 22 July 2026 in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In your request, you asked:
“Under the Freedom of Information Act, please provide me with details of all payments – whether pension or otherwise – made to Jeffrey Donaldson from the point when he resigned as an MLA.”
Our response
Under Standing Order 76 (2) the Speaker has made arrangements for the annual publication of details of sums paid by the Assembly to its current and former Members. This includes information on salaries, allowances and other expenditure reimbursed to or recovered by Members.
To support transparency, the details are itemised and published on a quarterly basis, including the amount paid, expense type, transaction date and the name of the supplier. Where a Member's name is shown as the supplier, this indicates that the Member initially met the cost and was subsequently reimbursed.
Mr Donaldson ceased to be a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly on 10 June 2010.
From the date of resignation, Mr Donaldson was entitled to claim costs associated with winding up his Assembly business (Winding up Allowance).
These were paid under the provisions of The Northern Ireland Assembly (Members’ Expenditure) Determination 2010.
The information in relation to his Winding Up Allowance is published on the Northern Ireland Assembly’s website.
In relation to pension payments, the Assembly Commission acts as a payroll bureau for the Assembly Members’ Pension Scheme (Northern Ireland) 2016 (AMP Scheme) and as such holds information in relation to pension payments made to Mr Donaldson. This information is, however, exempt from disclosure under section 40 of the FOIA.
Section 40(2) of the FOIA provides that information is exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and satisfies one of three conditions. The Assembly Commission is satisfied that one such condition is satisfied. It is not therefore necessary to consider the other potentially applicable conditions. The relevant condition is set out at section 40(3A) (a) of the FOIA and is that "disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act…would contravene any of the data protection principles…”.
The data protection principles are set out at Article 5 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The first principle is that processing of personal data must be fair, lawful and transparent. Processing is ‘lawful’ under the first principle if it satisfies one or more of the conditions at Article 6 of the UK GDPR.
The Assembly Commission does not consider that any condition at Article 6 would allow the lawful disclosure of individual payments to a member of the AMP Scheme.
Further Information
You may request an internal review of this decision by the Assembly Commission. If you wish to request such a review, please write to me at the above address. If, after that review, you are dissatisfied with the way in which the Assembly Commission has handled your request for information, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Your request for information and our response may be published in the disclosure log maintained by the Assembly Commission under a publication scheme agreed with the ICO. The request and our response will be anonymised.
Yours sincerely,
INFORMATION STANDARDS
