Ballee Belatedly
One of my regular commenters, RJ, has asked for a specific thread on the Ballee land deal in County Antrim. Belatedly, here it is.
I was away in London last Thursday when Martina Purdy's initial report on the deal aired on BBC Newsline. But I was on duty at Stormont this Monday when the SDLP's Declan O'Loan put out a statement saying he was referring Ian Paisley Jr.'s role in the deal to the Assembly Standards and Privileges Committee and the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. Viewers of that night's BBC Newsline will have seen Ian Jr. join me for an impromptu live appearance during which he accused the SDLP of launching a "witch hunt" against him.
The facts related to the Ballee deal are fairly complex and have been recorded elsewhere on this website.
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Some commenters on this site and over on Slugger O'Toole view the deal with their usual scepticism.
However others think that a mountain is being made, if not out of a molehill, then out of nearly 100 acres of County Antrim. On Friday last week a political update from the lobby firm Chambre Public Affairs dropped in my e-mail in box. It accused the BBC of finding Ian Jr. guilty of nothing more than lobbying for his constituents. I shall put the full Chambre comment in the extended entry below.
Aside from the details of Ballee, one issue which may be worth mentioning concerns the Stormont ministerial code.
So far we have had Peter Robinson accusing Margaret Ritchie of breaking the code, Basil McCrea raising questions about whether Caitriona Ruane has broken the code and Ian Jr. facing a similar line of criticism in relation to both his comments about gays and now the Ballee deal. In relation to the "gay" comments he was exonerated of breaking the Stormont MLAs code of conduct by the Interim Assembly Commissioner for Standards, Tom Frawley.
But neither Mr Frawley nor the Assembly Standards and Privileges Committee have any remit over the Executive's Ministerial Code, only over the rules that govern ordinary MLAs. That's why Declan O'Loan also referred his complaint to the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. The Ministerial Code has legal force, so I suppose that ultimately it could be tested in the courts, but in terms of investigating whether or not it has been upheld there does not seem to be any other system of external assessment.
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