Council criticised over £175,000 funding to ‘Free Derry’ museum

Derry City and Strabane District Council has defended its decision to allocate £175,000 to the Museum of Free Derry after being accused of ‘giving away money it doesn’t have’.

The funding allocation was discussed a meeting of the Council’s Assurance, Audit and Risk Committee.

Elected members were told that concerns had been raised at a June meeting of same committee over the ‘rational and process’ surrounding council’s decision to award the funding.

It was then agreed a report would be brought back to council, which was presented at Thursday’s meeting.

Denise McDonnell, lead assurance officer, told the meeting that the Museum of Free Derry had requested financial support from council towards the delivery of the project.

She added Tourism Northern Ireland (formerly NITB) was the lead funder of the project, which was set to cost a total of £2,209, 880.

The meeting was told that due to the £175, 000 shortfall, the construction contract could not be signed and the funding gap was presenting a ‘serious challenge’ to the project.

Ms McDonnell said council ‘felt that it was important to consider this request’ due to the fact that there is ‘currently no other significant tourist attraction in the region attracting funding of £2m’.

She added that ‘if this funding was lost there would be a significant impact on the investment potential that the project could bring to the area’.

Outlining council’s rationale for allocating the £175,000 requested, Ms McDonnell added the ‘objectives and aims of the Museum of Free Derry complement the tourism aspirations for the new council area’.

“These include developing and strengthening the tourism industry in the Northwest as well as enhancing the portfolio of visitor attractions within the new council area,” she continued.

She said a letter of offer has been sent to the Museum of Free Derry with ‘strict terms and conditions’, one of which states that council is the ‘lender of last resort’ for the project.

The meeting was also told there was no competitive process for the funding as ‘council did not have a sum of money that was readily available to the community’.

The meeting was told that ‘going forward’, council would only consider allocating funding to external projects outside of a competitive process if the objectives of the project meet the objectives of the relevant councils, if council funding is available and if the project already has secured significant external funding.

However, the independent councillor Paul Gallagher said he had ‘no grievance with the third party receiving the money’, he did have concerns as to how it was allocated.

“It says here in the report that ‘council felt it was important’. Who is the council then? And why was this business case not presented to members?” he said.

“In effect, someone looked over a business case and made a decision to give away £175,000, what protocols are there around that?”

He added: “Who made this decision to give away £175,000 we don’t have?”

Ms McDonell replied that the decision had been made by the committee and then ratified by the full council.

Cllr Gallagher replied that it was his belief that the purpose of the audit committee to act as the ‘conscience of council’ was ‘defunct’, as it seemed that ‘council could approve anything’.

The chair of the committee, Sinn Fein councillor Sandra Duffy, said that funding had been approved at a previous committee meeting, where Cllr Gallagher had the opportunity to raise the issue.

The meeting then heard from Anthony Jackson, an independent advisor to council’s audit department, who said that the audit committee had ‘behaved absolutely appropriately’.

UUP councillor Derek Hussey said that his party would also ‘have difficulties’ with the funding allocation, given that it would now have to be taken out of the rates in 2016/17.

“Within the private world, if there’s not sufficient money to complete a project, then you re-arrange it,” he said.

£20,000 will be provided to the Museum of Free Derry from the council’s Business Budget for 2015/2016 and the remaining £155,000 is to be considered as part of the rates for 2016/2017.