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The Giants Causeway and the great land grab

JM Thorn

9 October 2007 

The controversy surrounding the building of a new visitors’ centre at the Giants Causeway has highlighted once again the thoroughly rotten character of the Stormont Executive. 

On 10th September DUP environment minister Arlene Foster issued a statement saying she was “of a mind” to grant approval to a plan from a private developer to build a new visitors’ centre at the Causeway.  This was followed up immediately by a statement from the DUP enterprise minister Nigel Dodds announcing that he was withdrawing funding from a proposed public project that had been in development for a number of years.  This double blow effectively left the bid from the private developer – Seymour Sweeny’s Seaport Investments – as the only one on the table. 

The Causeway site is managed jointly by the National Trust and Moyle District Council - largely through the revenue generated from the current visitors’ centre.  Any alternative private centre would therefore draw away much-needed funds and put the public management of the site in jeopardy.  It would raise the prospect the Giants Causeway effectively falling under private control.  It would also put in jeopardy the Causeway’s status as a World Heritage Site as the plans from Seaport Investments clearly breached the UNESCO guidelines. All these factors were dismissed by the minister in her endorsement of the private proposal. 

Soon after the announcement by the DUP ministers speculation began to circulate over the relationship between the party and the owner of Seaport Investments - Seymour Sweeney.   These largely centred on the DUP leader and his son.   When initially challenged to clarify his relationship with the developer Ian Paisley Jnr stated that he “knew of him” as a constituent.  However, it soon became clear that the relationship between Sweeney and the Paisleys was much more extensive.  Sweeney released a statement revealing that he was indeed a member of the DUP.  He also revealed that he had signed nomination papers for DUP Moyle councillor and convicted fraudster David McAllister, whose local authority includes the Causeway, and had sold two holiday homes in Bushmills to Ian Paisley Jnr and his in-laws. 

Since then there has been a steady stream of revelations about the DUP and Sweeney.  These include Ian Paisley Junior lobbying the Fisheries Conservation Board to give a drift-net fishing licence to a boat crewed by, among others, Sweeney and two of his relatives and the aforenamed Ian Jnr giving evidence at a planning appeal in support of a development which Sweeney had proposed.  He even lobbied on behalf of a controversial proposal to redevelop the Nook Pub near the Causeway! 

More pertinently the Paisleys have lobbied extensively on behalf of Sweeney’s Causeway visitors centre plans and against the alternative public project.   In 2001, Paisley Jnr supported Sweeney’s initial proposal.  In 2002 Ian Paisley Snr lobbied the then DETI minister Reg Empey on behalf of the plan.  Sweeny used the DUP leader’s name in a grant application for his plans – listing him as a projective trustee of his planned Causeway centre in an unsuccessful submission for Heritage Lottery Fund money in 2002. Paisley Snr wrote to the Heritage Lottery Fund in January 2003, lobbying for a grant for the Sweeney’s visitor centre plans. His letter made the misleading claim that the proposal had the support of world heritage body Unesco. 

In early 2005, the Paisleys issued a joint statement denouncing the Government-backed project as "fool's gold".  In June 2005, Ian Paisley Junior wrote to the Secretary of State Peter Hain in support of private sector involvement in the development of the Causeway site.  That September the DUP leader wrote to Moyle councillors warning them against a “hasty” endorsement of the public project.  This is particularly ironic as one of the justifications given by the DUP ministers for supporting Sweeny’s plans was the delay in moving the public project forward.  It is now clear that their party leader was doing his best to scupper it. What has also emerged is that in backing the private bid the DUP environment minister Arlene Foster ignored her own department’s recommendations.   The DOE’s own Environmental Heritage Service strongly recommended rejecting the private sector venture.  Planning Service officials were also working towards a refusal recommendation in recent years. 

All of this raises serous questions over the decision on the Causeway visitors centre.   At the very least there is the basis for an inquiry into how the decision was arrived at.  But no politicians are raising the questions; no parties are calling for inquiries.  Most of the controversy surrounding this has been generated by the media not by the probing of politicians.  In any normal liberal democracy rival parties would be pushing this issue for all it is worth, but within the Assembly there is largely silence.  This is because the political structures in the north don’t allow for opposition.  Any opposition could bring the whole edifice crashing down.   In the name of peace potential corruption goes unchallenged. 

Privatisation

At the most basic level the decisions by the DUP ministers over the Causeway visitors centre reflect their commitment, and that of the Executive as a whole, to the privatisation agenda.  Almost every policy announced by the Executive is designed to reduce the size of the public sector and shift public money into private hands.

The main mechanism to achieve this has been Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs).  They were rolled out in the first Executive, with the then education minister Martrin McGuinness being among their most enthusiastic backers.  He described PFIs at the time as “value for money” and “innovative”.  However, a recent Audit Office report has painted a completely different picture.  Reviewing the use of PFIs in the school building programme it found that they saddled taxpayers with surplus buildings and also handed land to developers at well below the market value.  According to the Audit office, school and college building projects, in direct contradiction of Martin McGuinness’s claim, were “not giving best value for money".   In four projects in Belfast, including Wellington College and Balmoral High School, the value of land handed over was underestimated.  It is estimated that the land plots were released at £3.4m below market value.  One developer was given land said to be one acre when it was 50 per cent larger.   The case of Balmoral High School has already widely cited as a PFI disaster story. It was given the go-ahead on the basis of a predicted growth in pupil numbers. Enrolment instead slumped, leading to a decision to close it down next year.  But this still left the Belfast Education and Library Board under contract to keep paying for the school until 2026/27.   The Audit Office also found that the public purse did not get a good deal from the subsequent re-sale of the sites.  The "claw-back agreements" to force the developers to hand over a share of larger than expected profits recovered only a fraction of the public money lost.  For example, the consortium responsible for Balmoral High School sold its land at to a subsidiary company for £3.8m.  It argued that the terms of the PFI contract entitled the Board to claw-back of just £13,000 from the sale.  A sum of £793,000 was eventually paid after intensive negotiations.
 
The common feature of all PFI projects is that private profit is accrued at public expense.  Despite this, and the increasingly obvious failures of such schemes, the Executive is powering ahead with them.  Water treatment and sewage works have already been handed over to a private consortium.  The executives of the newly created NI Water have made public their intention to outsource other parts of the water service and to dispose of its assets.  When the Minister for Regional Development, Connor Murphy, was challenged to step in and prevent this, he hid behind legislation to excuse his inaction.  Effectively we already have a private water company that is unaccountable and can sell off assets without consultation.  Indeed, leaks from the Water Charges Review suggested that the Executive may endorse asset sales in a spurious belief that this will reduce bills. The actual report will do nothing to halt the privatisation offensive or to prevent workers from having to foot the bill for water privatisation. 

The biggest PFI project yet, which involves selling off government buildings and renting them back, has been endorsed by finance minister Peter Robinson. The Workplace 2010 initiative will transfer some 80 civil service buildings to a new private sector landlord.  Robinson described these plans as a “no brainer”. Fortuitously for the prospective private landlord, £97.8m has been spent by the Government in the past eight years upgrading properties on the sell-off list.

Though it has existed only a few months the Executive has already displayed its character and the course on which it is set.  It is a noxious mix of sectarianism and right wing economics.  Each reinforces the other as people are mobilised on a community basis to compete for dwindling public resources.  The lack of financial support from the British also serves to reinforce this.  The peace dividend from Gordon Brown has not materialised.  Over the coming period the Executive will operating on a shrinking budget.  As a way of mitigating this ministers have lighted on the idea of selling off public land to raise revenue.  Of course this will only work in the short term.  Over a longer period, because the PFI schemes that involve transfer of land incur huge liabilities and costs, the budget available to the Executive will be reduced even further.  The financial basis for the Executive is therefore very weak. 

However, none of the parties within the political structures dare discuss this issue.   Also there is no opposition to the privatisation drive.  Officially Sinn Fein has committed itself “to actively promote and participate in public campaigns to end PFI/PPP”.  But in the Executive its ministers the have been enthusiastic supporters of PFI.  Sinn Fein is trying to play the role of both opposition and Government.  But this is phoney opposition.  When presented with the choice it will go along with anything the Executive proposes.  The preservation of power sharing with the DUP is placed above everything else – this is Sinn Fein’s only policy.  Appealing to the Executive and Assembly to halt privatisation is therefore a fruitless exercise.  All the parties in the Executive support privatisation.   Indeed, they see it as an essential element of their programme.  Also they are not going to raise issues that could bring the whole political edifice crashing down and put their privileges in jeopardy. 

Part of the process of workers mounting a successful defence against the ongoing neo-liberal onslaught in the north will be them losing their illusions in the Assembly and Executive, and in the confessional parties that they have put there to defend purely local and communal issues.  The corruption is rampant and has become the hallmark of the government in a very short time.  Self-serving deals and personal enrichment are simply a subset of an overall drive to enrich private enterprise at the expense of the public purse.  The only outcome can be a massive decline in workers living standards.  It is an unsavoury and unstable mix that would not easily survive a serious challenge. 
 

 


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