Jim Allister’s speech in today’s Redsky debate:-
Mr Allister: I suppose that it was too much to expect that, even at this point, there would be any recognition of the wrongdoing on which Mr McCausland was caught out. Instead, of course, we got an arrogant attempt to defend the indefensible. The Red Sky escapade and the political involvement in it has to be one of the worst excesses of abuse of power that has been seen under devolution.
Often, a single piece of evidence is the key that unlocks many investigations and cases and their eventual outcomes, and so it was in this case. It came from the minute of that amazing meeting of 27 June 2011, when the Minister, just into office, met his most senior DUP colleagues, including the First Minister, and the former directors of Red Sky but carefully excluded from that meeting the administrator of Red Sky and the Housing Executive. That minute records the key to this case, which is that, at the end of it, when the idea was spawned of buying an extension to the contract, the Minister is recorded to say that the new company might also be able to progress matters during that time. The new company, of course, was to be the reincarnation of Red Sky, and the whole essence of the idea of extending the contract was in order that the new company might have time to get on its feet and take over from where Red Sky left off. That is what the Minister let out of the bag at that meeting. From that moment, it was abundantly clear that the commercial interests of Red Sky and the political interests of the DUP had coalesced. That is the smoking gun in this case. It was the scene-setter for all that the Minister and his special adviser did thereafter: all the bullying and the attempts to intimidate the Housing Executive and their own councillor, Councillor Jenny Palmer. That has to be one of the most disgraceful episodes in this matter: the way in which Councillor Jenny Palmer was treated by her own party and the aggressive, bullying phone call from the special adviser, telling her what to do, because the party came first.
I think that all of us in that Committee who came to it with any objectivity could not fail to be impressed with the compelling, transparent honesty of Jenny Palmer, of her courage in telling the truth and how shameful it was that, in one of the sessions, Sammy Wilson effectively said that she was a liar. That was a disgrace amongst many in the distracting attempts to disrupt the Committee.
Mrs D Kelly: Will the Member give way?
Mr Allister: Yes.
Mrs D Kelly: Would the Member agree with me that there were more red herrings that fact in Mr McCausland’s contribution ?
Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.
Mr Allister: There was certainly no focus on the facts. There was a dodging, a ducking and a diving, as ever. Was that not Mr McCausland at the Committee? Was that not exactly how he behaved? He could not remember, he could not say, and he would not say.
If he was bad, my oh my, the special adviser was 10 times worse. I have encountered a lot of dodgy witnesses in my time, but I have to say that Mr Brimstone takes the biscuit. He takes the biscuit. He really was deliberately evasive. [Interruption.]
He put himself in a position of faking memory loss and showed himself to be in total estrangement from the truth. He also demonstrated a flagrant breach of the solemn affirmation that he took to help the Committee and to provide all the evidence that he could. He patently did not and he deliberately did not, and there is no escaping that reality. His treatment of Jenny Palmer was beyond description. To think that it is she who faces discipline while he continues in his £90,000 a year job on the public purse. No doubt he is listening to the debate tucked away in a room somewhere. Might he hang his head in shame for the manner in which he treated his colleague Councillor Jenny Palmer.
Speaking of Jenny Palmer’s colleagues, where are her friends from Lagan Valley? Where are Edwin Poots and Paul Givan to speak up in her defence? Is it a case that, again, the party come first? Will they vote to negative the report because the party comes first? In the name of decency and honesty, is there no one with the strength to stand up and say, “We believe — we know — that Jenny Palmer was telling the truth, and we are ashamed of how she was treated by her party.”? That is what one would expect from people faced with such a situation.