Ian Paisley spoke this week about reforming Freedom of Information, four days after the Act revealed embarrassing details of manoeuvring over a visitors centre, writes Susan McKay
The big new First Minister smile disappeared last week and there was a flash of the old, furious Paisley. It wasn't about guns and godfathers - that's so last year. This was about Freedom of Information (FoI). Well, it was about journalists, really - a pesky UN woman and a couple of nationalist MLAs. Between them, this lot have dug up evidence that is deeply embarrassing to the Paisley duo, father and son.
On Tuesday at Stormont, the DUP leader denounced "lazy journalists who will not do any work" but who instead "think that we should pay them and give them the information they want". FoI requests were taking up far too much civil service time.
There might, he said darkly, have to be reform. Odd that in July the old man had declared proudly that "considerable strides" had been made through FoI, "towards achieving our goal of more open government".
What was rattling the First Minister was not lazy journalists, but a very diligent one. Four days before the Stormont outburst, David Gordon of the Belfast Telegraph had revealed the contents of a remarkable letter he had obtained through FoI.
Written in 2003 on House of Commons notepaper in the name of Rev Dr Ian Paisley MP, MEP and MLA, and signed by Ian Paisley jnr, the letter was to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), berating them for turning down an application for funds from one Seymour Sweeney, who wanted to build a visitors centre at the Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim.
The HLF had treated this as if it was some "second rate, minor" thing, Paisley huffed. In fact, he said, this proposal "has Unesco approval". The grounds given for refusing it were "absolute rubbish". The HLF was either "poorly advised" or it was "pursuing an agenda" to favour a rival bid. If fraudulence was afoot, he would have to raise it at Westminster.
Enter the pesky woman. The Giant's Causeway is the North's only World Heritage Site, a rare and much prized designation awarded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). Unesco officials rarely speak in public, but when Mechtild Rössler heard about Paisley's claims, she gave an interview to BBC Northern Ireland.
No such approval had been given, she said sternly. For a start, Unesco did not deal with developers, only with governments. And in any case, it had made it clear that any new development on the site should be built in the footprint of the old centre, which burned down in 2000. "That is my position and I am not moving one millimetre," she said. Not a millimetre. Paisley's old cry of "not an inch" sounded flexible by comparison.
The causeway, which attracts half a million visitors a year, is in a designated "area of outstanding national beauty". Unesco wants a "modest" building on the old site and no building at all on land around that site. Sweeney's proposal is for a three-storey building, twice the size of the old one, and on land he owns in the proposed protected zone.
THIS IS GETTING worse and worse for the DUP. After the old centre was destroyed, direct rule minister Ian Pearson had set up an international design competition for a replacement. This had the backing of the National Trust, which owns the causeway stones, the local Moyle District Council, the NI Tourist Board, various heritage and conservation bodies, and the International Union of Architects - the Unesco-nominated body for running such competitions. It was part of the overall integrated plan for the Northern area.
The winning design was by Dublin architect Róisín Heneghan, and is proudly displayed on the website of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI), which covers tourism. Glossy government leaflets about the Giant's Causeway likewise enthuse over the project.
In 2005, Heneghan's company was given the go-ahead. In the same year, we now know, thanks to lazy journalists, Paisley snr, the local MP, wrote to Moyle District Council urging them to drop their support for this plan, which he called "fool's gold". The council declined to do so.
This row blew up last month when the DUP Environment Minister, Arlene Foster, suddenly announced she was "minded" to approve Sweeney's proposal instead of the award-winning public one. She did so despite the fact that her own departmental officials had recommended refusal of Sweeney's application. She also said she'd sue anyone who implied any wrongdoing on her part. Days later, the DETI Minister, the DUP's Nigel Dodds, said he was withdrawing public funds from the other project. He later said he was suspending them pending a decision from Foster.
Sweeney, it quickly emerged, though not from the DUP press office, is a DUP member who signed nomination papers for a local council candidate. He is also one of the main private property developers on the north coast, which is rapidly being ruined by the blight of investment apartment developments and holiday homes. One such home was bought by Ian Paisley jnr, though it was not registered in his name and he did not declare it as an asset.
Asked on a radio programme if he knew Sweeney, Paisley jnr replied coyly: "I know of him." Lazy journalists then produced beaming photos of Sweeney and the two Paisleys in Bushmills together. David Gordon said he "spluttered in disbelief", having met Paisley jnr acting as "an enthusiastic supporter" of Sweeney back in 2001.
SDLP MLA's Declan O'Loan and John Dallat have been dogging the DUP on the issue. Dallat is to refer Paisley's letter to the HLF to the parliamentary standards watchdog at Westminster, and O'Loan has further questions lined up for Foster and Dodds.
Sinn Féin has demanded to see the planning advice given to Foster. She has so far refused to supply key files.
The party's local MLA, and most junior politician, Daithí McKay, even said last week that the party might even have to "review our situation within government", though senior figures kept their power-sharing smiles firmly in place and said nothing about this extravagant claim. Inside the DUP, Foster and Dodds must be raging.
Whatever the political fallout, it looks like the Big Man and his son are going to have to wear sackcloth and ashes on this one.