It seems that whenever Stormont’s Special Advisors (SpAds) are in the news something has gone badly wrong.

Despite the fact that SpAds were, up until recently, some of the best paid in Northern Ireland — in 2015 the average salary for a Special Advisor was £75,105 with a top rate of £91,809 — these individuals have been at the centre of almost every political scandal to hit Northern Ireland in recent years.

Few people would have heard of SpAds prior to 2012 when a row broke out over Sinn Féin’s decision to employ Mary McArdle as Special Advisor to the then Culture Minister, Carál Ní Chuilín. Ms McArdle’s appointment was controversial due to a previous conviction for her role in the 1984 murder of Mary Travers.

Whilst Ms McArdle was eventually removed from that position, the furore led to the passing of TUV MLA Jim Allister’s Civil Service (Special Advisors) bill in June 2013. This bill prohibited ministers from employing any persons with a serious criminal conviction as a special advisor and, for the first time, forced the then Department of Finance and Personnel to publish a code for appointment of special advisors, a code of conduct for special advisors and an annual report about the number and cost of special advisors.

The ink had barely dried on this bill when Stephen Brimstone, then Special Advisor to the then Minister for Social Development, Nelson McCausland, became the focus of the scandal over Red Sky.

Mr Brimstone was accused of telling Jenny Palmer (then a DUP Councillor with a vote on the Housing Executive) to change her vote in relation to the Red Sky contract. Ms Palmer alleged that Mr Brimstone, acting on behalf of the minister, had insisted that she change her vote out of loyalty to the party, telling her: “the party comes first – you do what you are told.”

A subsequent investigation by a Stormont committee quickly became a bad-tempered affair as the DUP’s Gregory Campbell and Sammy Wilson accused MLAs of attempting to bully Mr Brimstone during his appearance before it. Despite this, few were impressed by Mr Brimstone’s answers and none were surprised when the committee determined that Mrs Palmer’s evidence was “compelling, consistent and convincing” whilst Mr Brimstone was “deliberately evasive in his answers to the point of obstructing the committee.”

Special Advisors were in the news again the following year, 2015, when Peter Robinson made the controversial decision to replace the outgoing DUP MLA for South Belfast, Jimmy Spratt, with Emma Little Pengelly. Mrs Little Pengelly had served as a Special Advisor for almost nine years when she was co-opted and went on to receive a £45,000 severance payment.

This decision was made all the more controversial when Mrs Little Pengelly joined the Finance Committee which was then investing the NAMA scandal. The fact that Mrs Little Pengelly’s husband, Richard Pengelly, was a senior civil servant in the Department for Finance and Personnel up until December 2012 created a potential conflict of interest which Mrs Little Pengelly herself acknowledged — yet she declined to absent herself from the committee’s investigation on NAMA stating that she and her husband “were both adults”.

However, all of these scandals pale in comparison to the allegations that have been made about SpAds since the RHI “Cash for Ashes” scandal broke in December 2016.

I will not repeat the lengthy list of allegations made by former DUP MLA and minister Jonathan Bell, but they are incredibly serious should any of them be proven to be true. (It is worth noting that to date Mr Bell seems to have struggled to substantiate a number of his more alarming allegations.)

But regardless of the ultimate outcome with regard to the RHI enquiry, it is clear that SpAds have found themselves at the centre of yet another Northern Irish political scandal. It’s time to take action.

The simple reality is that we need to know a lot more about Special Advisors, their work, their interests and their performance. The most straightforward way to do this would be to update the codes of employment and conduct already legislated for in the Civil Service (Special Advisors) bill. How?

Firstly, the powers and functions of Special Advisors should be laid out in writing to ensure that civil servants, ministers and MLAs know precisely what role SpAds should play – especially with regard to the running of departments. A review should also take place to determine a more appropriate remuneration for this work – presumably a lot less than SpAds have been paid in the past, and definitely less than MLAs get paid.

Secondly, the appointment of Special Advisors should be subject to confirmation by the corresponding committee at Stormont. Committees would have the power to determine if an individual is qualified and would also have the power to call Special Advisors before them on a regular basis to hold them to account.

Thirdly, in order to restore public confidence, Special Advisors must be required to publish a full and comprehensive register of interests in line with those already published by MLAs.

These (simple) measures will go some way towards restoring public confidence in our politics by introducing greater transparency and accountability to a powerful position within our institutions. That said, it is difficult to imagine the DUP and Sinn Féin either agreeing to or prioritising these measures anytime soon. This lack of interest underlines the importance of the people’s voice being heard in whatever future negotiations take place to get Stormont back up and running.

Every time we have a crisis the parties make new, sometimes radical, changes to our institutions without any input from the public at large. After the 2017 elections, called under such pitiful circumstances, it befalls us to find a mechanism for ensuring that our voice is heard. We must use it to demand the transparency and accountability that is the bedrock of good governance.


Also published on Medium.