By Kevin Mullan

Copyright derryjournal

The Foyle MLA raised what he described as the ‘neglect of the North West’ at the Stormont Communities Committee on Thursday. “It’s fair to say that more than Derry City and Institute feel hard done by and there are more clubs which very much appear to have been hard done by,” said the SDLP representative. Mr. Durkan asked officials about the range of options presented to sports minister Gordon Lyons for consideration prior to sign off on the final list of 20 football clubs that were ultimately successful. Mr. Lyons earlier confirmed to the Assembly that he opted to take forward ‘a range of small, medium and large projects’ from each tier of the fund with only two – Glentoran and Cliftonville – proceeding from Tier 3 (projects over £6m). Derry City had also applied for Tier 3 funding. “In terms of that range of options are you at liberty today to tell us, or give us a flavour of what they were; when they had been provided to the minister; and when he indicated to you or informed you of his decision or how he would proceed; and was his ultimate, I suppose, direction contained in the list of options presented to him,” asked Mr. Durkan. Emer Morelli, Deputy Secretary for Engaged Communities at the Department for Communities replied: “As Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for the programme overall I give advice and it is my role to give advice to the minister, it is for the minister then to consider that advice. “I think it is really important, and the chair touched on it in his opening comments, around budgets and tolerable limits, for example, on how far we can over plan. “We have to look at the wider system here. We have to take advice, we have to take legal advice, finance advice, colleagues in procurement, on what is actually available in the market as well to make a rounded decision. “So while the minister was provided with the outcome of the frameworks and the assessments and scoring matrices, a contextual piece around the wider budget was also provided to him by me as SRO.” Ms. Morelli said she could not yet provide Mr. Durkan with details around the options as the Performance Programme was only one plank of the NI Football Fund. Work on a proposed Grassroots Facilities Programme and National Football Centre is still ongoing. “That policy remains in development, as the chair has acknowledged, with the grass roots scheme and the national training centre also key components of the wider programme so we are not at liberty today to open up that advice to the committee but we will reflect on the committee’s comments,” she said. Mr. Durkan asked if any recommendations had been made around regional balance. Ms. Morelli responded: “I can give assurance as SRO that the scheme was published in a fully transparent way, an agreed matrices and an agreed scoring was completed. The minister had no role in that assessment of those applications to reach those scores. So the process from the perspective of the programme is what it is.” She said advice was then provided for the minister to conclude. “There was no…the outcome is the outcome. There was no further manipulation or anything of that nature following that transparent process,” she said. Joanne Gray, who leads the NI Football Fund at DfC, said: “I think the merit order is the important point here. The merit order stood and was not available for the minister to change so any advice that might have required that to change couldn’t have changed.” Mr. Durkan, who claimed at Stormont this week that Derry City, scored fourth of all applicants, replied: “I’m not talking about the merit order with due respect. “I’m talking about the decision on how many from each tier go ahead with. I’ve been a minister before and know that recommendations and submissions come up with a range of options and ministers are sometimes encouraged or suggestions are made as to considerations that ministers should take around other issues when they are making decisions including regional balance.” Durkan calls for ‘VAR-like’ review of ‘diabolical’ decision to omit Derry City and Institute from stadium fund