ATTEMPTS BY Northern Ireland political parties to land a “killer blow” that would force the resignation of the Minister for Regional Development, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy, again failed this week.
The Newry and Armagh MP and Assembly member has been under pressure due to the crisis caused by the Christmas holiday freeze and subsequent thaw that left more than 40,000 householders without water.
DUP and Ulster Unionist politicians such as Gregory Campbell, Sir Reg Empey and Fred Cobain have implicitly or directly called for Mr Murphy’s resignation this week, while SDLP MLAs such as Conall McDevitt and Dominic Cunningham questioned the Minister’s ability to run his department.
The crisis has already forced the resignation of Laurence MacKenzie, the former chief executive of Northern Ireland Water, the quango that comes under the ultimate responsibility of Mr Murphy’s department. Moreover, separate official inquiries are being held into how NI Water dealt with the crisis, and into whether the Minister and his department met their responsibilities.
The problems at NI Water were exacerbated by another controversy last year that led to Mr Murphy sacking four of the company’s non-executive directors. They were dismissed after an internal investigation pointed to concerns over how contracts worth about £28 million were awarded.
Former IDA managing director Padraic White was appointed as interim chairman of NI Water after the sackings.
Mr Murphy came under additional pressure on Tuesday night after a draft report into this issue by the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee was leaked to UTV. It found that the investigation team’s judgment about the culpability of the sacked directors was “deficient” and “far too general”.
In the wake of the litany of problems affecting NI Water Mr Murphy was expected to suffer a severe grilling at yesterday’s meeting of the Assembly regional development committee which scrutinises the work of his department. However, adopting an assertive approach, as he has done throughout the crisis, Mr Murphy emerged from the meeting unscathed.
Ulster Unionist committee chairman Mr Cobain would not permit questions on the draft PAC report as it was outside of the remit of the regional development committee. Mr Murphy, however, said after yesterday’s meeting that he remained confident he had acted appropriately when dismissing the four directors and stressed that he had previously emphasised his own concerns that the department did not have enough control over NI Water.
During the meeting, he made clear that regardless of the PAC draft report he has confidence in new interim chairman Mr White.
When asked, he said he would not be seeking Mr White’s resignation, while adding that Mr MacKenzie has resigned of his own volition. “There is obviously an investigation being carried out into what happened. I haven’t asked for anyone’s resignation. I have, however, asked for everyone involved in the situation to assess their own performance,” he said.
With some ease, Mr Murphy dealt with the questions and the implicit and explicit criticism of his performance as Minister with oversight responsibility for NI Water.
He was more combative in the Assembly on Monday. He said that it suited some people to feign ignorance of the legal fact that NI Water was responsible for the delivery of water and sewerage services. He said he warned NI Water to be prepared for a crisis as far back as August.
“I will not satisfy those political opportunists, whose primary interest in this incident was to see what political advantage it might afford them. Their calls for my resignation are widely recognised for what they are, cynical exploitation of people’s misery and hardship,” said Mr Murphy.
