Council doing nothing wrong in payments to Sinn Fein councillors
Derry City and Strabane District Council has been told it is doing nothing wrong in paying Sinn Fein councillors’ allowance directly to the party.
It recently emerged that nine Sinn Fein councillors on the local council have their allowances paid straight in to a party bank account.
They are Kevin Campbell, Michael Cooper, Sandra Duffy, Paul Fleming, Tony Hassan, Christopher Jackson, Colly Kelly, Patricia Logue and Eric McGinley.
Each of the 40 councillors on the local authority receives an annual basic allowance of £14,200.
An additional special allowance is also available for those with specific duties such as chairing committees.
Those who have children or dependant elderly relatives can also further claim a dependants' carer's allowance of up to £8,100 annually.
It is understood that the allowance payments for the nine local Sinn Fein councillors comes to around £140,000.
In August of this year, the Department of the Environment (DoE) wrote to the local council relating to payment of councillor allowances being made directly to parties rather than to councillors.
In that correspondence, the DoE said that the present legislation ‘clearly states that councillor allowances are payable by councils to councillors in relation to carrying out their duties as a councillor’.
However, managers at the local council sought clarity from the DoE in relation to the ‘council's ability to limit the account that a councillor determines their allowances should be paid into’.
A report outlining the DoE’s response to this request came before a meeting of the council’s Governance and Strategic Planning Committeeon Tuesday of this week in the Guildhall.
The report stated: “The DOE have now clarified that whilst legislation is silent on the matter, it is the department’s view that a council's obligation only extends to carrying out the direction of the councillor and holding that direction as a record.
“The department has also confirmed that it would seem that council is already following good practice in this regard by administering the necessary payroll deductions for each member and making payments as instructed by each individual member.”
A Sinn Fein spokesperson said its councillors in Derry choose to have their payments paid into a central account and make a voluntary donation to the party.