A SENIOR civil servant suspended over a scandal linked to Northern Ireland’s government-owned water company was not made a scapegoat, his Minister insisted yesterday.
Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy of Sinn Féin rejected claims from political rivals that permanent secretary Paul Priestly was singled out in a bid to draw a line under successive controversies that have rocked Northern Ireland Water.
Mr Priestly is the subject of a civil service investigation, over claims he drafted a letter of complaint to a powerful Stormont scrutiny committee, by one of a team of independent investigators probing the water company.
While Mr Murphy yesterday supported the decision to suspend Mr Priestly, the Sinn Féin Minister said he retained confidence in the water company’s chief executive Laurence MacKenzie, who was copied into the e-mail containing the suggested text of the letter.
The Minister also denied his own position as the head of the department with responsibility for the water company was in question. “There is no question here of scapegoating anyone,” he said.
“The head of the civil service agreed that the issues surrounding Paul Priestly were such that they merited his suspension and an investigation to be launched, and I agree with that and made my views clear on that.”
Four water company board members were sacked in March after the independent probe found that £28.5 million (€34.9 million) in contracts was issued without the work being tendered properly.
But the incident that prompted Mr Priestly’s suspension related to later exchanges between one of the independent reviewers and the Public Accounts Committee, which was also investigating the water company.
Last week the Democratic Unionist Party’s Finance Minister Sammy Wilson attacked Mr Murphy’s handling of the matter and questioned whether Mr Priestly was a scapegoat for continued controversies surrounding the water company.