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Ulster Unionist Party Leader and East Belfast MLA Sir Reg Empey today expressed his total delight that the Connswater Community Greenway has been awarded £23.5 Million to transform the banks of the Connswater River into what Sir Reg has described as a mini-Laganside by the National Lottery Big Lottery Fund.

In a statement Sir Reg said,

“I am totally delighted that the Connswater Community Greenway is receiving the £23 Million. This is a project that I have been involved in championing since its inception a couple of years ago.

We can do much better than the stinking mess that the Connswater River currently is. At present it is full of junk, shopping trolleys and in the summer it stinks to high heaven and I have long been advocating a Laganside style development along the banks of the Connswater.

The River, thanks to the vision of the Greenway project, whose efforts today were given the ultimate accolade by receiving this huge cash boost by the Big Lottery Fund, will now be utterly transformed.

I would like congratulate the staff at the project and all of those involved at local community group level. It was this community effort that no doubt swung things in their favour, coupled with the cross party support from local representatives and Belfast City Council.”

The Ulster Unionist Party won support for an amendment to a Ministerial motion seeking to transfer ‘meaningful powers’ to Councils in the review of the RPA. Lagan Valley UUP MLA Basil McCrea led the debate for the Party.

In a statement Mr. McCrea said,

“For local government to have real significance it needs to have responsibility for meaningful functions. This is the case throughout the rest of the United Kingdom – but not in Northern Ireland. The last Executive initiated the RPA in order to restore real local democracy in Northern Ireland. It is commonsense that local voters and local councillors are best placed to make local decisions on a wide range of service delivery and planning issues.

Unfortunately the DUP Environment Minister’s review of the RPA has decided to keep power at the centre – rather than to devolve it to where it belongs, to local councils. Is it any wonder that the local government association, NILGA, has said that the Minister’s refusal to give real power to local councils “calls into question the value of reorganising councils”?

The Minister’s complacency and inertia with regards to the need to revitalise local government in this part of the United Kingdom – and her desire to keep power at the centre rather than return it to local communities – is a disappointing, if unsurprising, development. Accountable regional government at Stormont needs to be complemented by strong, robust local government – not least because local government is best placed to deliver services effectively and efficiently to local communities”.

UUP Health Committee John McAllister responded to comments made by Peter Robinson on the Health Budget to the Assembly Scrutiny Committee this morning. The UUP man said that there was breakdown between the Finance Minister and his wife Iris, the Chair of the Health Committee, who said that an increase in the Direct Rule budget of 2005 of 9% for health was insufficient.

Mr. McCallister said, “obviously there has been something of a breakdown in communications in the Robinson household. Finance Minister Peter Robinson is telling the Northern Ireland public that his miserly increase in spending on our NHS of 3.8% is enough. Iris Robinson, however, told the House of Commons in April 2005 that that year’s Direct Rule budget increase on NHS expenditure of 9% was insufficient. To quote Mrs. Robinson:

‘although a proposed increase of 9% … in the current expenditure of the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety may, on the surface, appear generous, health inflation continues to grow at a much steeper rate. By 2007-08, the percentage rise that direct rule Ministers have committed themselves to will be less than 6%. The positive public messages from Ministers do not equate with the demands and restrictions that they are placing on senior managers away from the media spotlight’. (House of Commons, 5th April 2005.)

That said, perhaps we should not be too hard on the Robinsons. They have, after all, led the DUP to perform some spectacular u-turns in recent times. This merely adds to the list. A 9% increase in health expenditure in 2005, Iris Robinson said, was not enough. Today Peter Robinson tells us that 3.8% is enough.”