Below is the speech by TUV leader Jim Allister during Monday’s debate on the DSD Committee report into the actions of Nelson McCausland:
“There is no dispute or issue but that the Minister misled the Committee. The issue is whether he did so inadvertently, as he now claims, or did so deliberately. The answer as to which it is lies, I suggest, in the very significant and very determined efforts that the Minister and his right arm — his special adviser — made to cover up with whom the relevant meeting had been. It is clear that everyone else at that meeting was abundantly in no doubt that they were meeting Turkington’s. Indeed, anyone who had read the letter of invitation would have known that. The civil servants there knew that it was Turkington’s, and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive knew that it was Turkington’s. But, in this wonderland, the Minister and the special adviser believed that it was someone else.
“To sustain that pretence, they set about a concerted effort of writing Turkington’s out of the record. So, the Minister’s diary was changed. The Minister’s diary for 16 April, or whenever, stated, “Meeting with Turkington’s”, but, retrospectively, it was changed to write Turkington’s out of it. It was changed to, “Meeting with the Glass and Glazing Federation”.
“The special adviser, in his own hand, changes an answer to the House to write Turkington’s out of the record. Then, we have the letter to the Committee Chairman changed not only to write Turkington’s out of the record but to write somebody who definitely was not at the meeting, namely Fusion21, into the record. Then, to crown it all, the minutes of the meeting — the official record of the meeting — are changed to write Turkington’s out of it, in the headline of with whom — with whom — the meeting had been held.
“Anyone ask themselves this: why were those determined efforts made? The Minister says, “Oh, I didn’t realise any of that. It was only when I heard the evidence and read the evidence from Turkington’s many months later that said that it was actually them I’d met that I realised that it was Turkington’s I’d met.” Had he not got a letter from the BBC challenging him that he had met Turkington’s? Yet here he was saying, “The first time that I ever heard or knew it was Turkington’s was when they gave evidence”. Had he not watched the ‘Spotlight’ programme in which Mr Young from Turkington’s refuted the suggestion that the meeting was with the Glass and Glazing Federation?
“The truth of the Minister’s position is that he ran out of road in maintaining the pretence once Turkington’s gave the evidence, and he was not prepared to challenge them. Turkington’s behaved honourably in front of the Committee. They threw no lifelines to the special adviser, who wanted to misrepresent a private meeting they had back in January in the Radisson hotel. He threw no lifelines to the Minister. The Minister ran out of road and then came up with this combination: “I inadvertently, unintentionally misinformed the Committee”. He did no such thing. He calculatedly, deliberately misled the Committee, and all the changes that were made point to that. Sadly, neither he nor his special adviser has been man enough to face up to it.
“We heard very important evidence from the Minister’s private secretary — the lady who changed the minutes and changed the diary. When she was pressed, “Who asked you to make the change?”, she said, “I certainly didn’t do it of my own volition.” She suggested that the two most likely people were the Minister and the special adviser because it was their belief that they had met the Glass and Glazing Federation. Sadly, she was not prepared to be more emphatic than that. Even more sadly, those we expect most of — the Minister and his special adviser — were not man enough to say, “Yes, it was me who gave the direction.” Instead, they took refuge in “I can’t recall” and such things — the ever-present refuge of the dissembler. I think that it was a very poor reflection indeed upon the Minister and his special adviser that they were not even man enough to face up to that.”