Allister exposes DUP bluster on Maze
02 July 2009
Jim Allister QC has said the Environment Minister’s request to officials to consider if structures at the Maze prison site can be delisted, amounts to nothing more than a DUP bluffing exercise.
Mr Allister commented:
“Last week, the Community Relations Council – the body charged with jointly administering Peace III funding for Measure 1.2 Acknowledging and dealing with the past - held a consultation exercise on the proposed development of a Conflict Transformation Centre, ‘possibly at the Maze Long Kesh’. The Strategic Investment Board also attended this meeting.
“How can anyone take Sammy Wilson’s claim that he is going to investigate the delisting of the Maze seriously when practical moves are afoot to develop what will inevitably become a Republican shrine?
“In June 2007 I wrote to the then DOE Minister Arlen Foster calling on her to de-list the Maze. After four months I received a reply telling me that Mrs Foster could not comply with my request because the proper process in relation to listing had been followed and citing the architectural and historical significance of the buildings as the reason for their listing.
“However, through the Freedom of information Act I obtained documentation which reveals that on the 21st January 2005 the Historic Building Council voted 5 to 1 against listing any of the buildings on the Maze site because they did “not feel that the buildings in the complex were unique nor had they any special architectural value”. At a subsequent meeting of the HBC this decision was reversed because the Chairman “suggested there was a need for members to focus on the criteria for historic interest rather than special architectural interest”.
“The Department's Listing Criteria makes it clear that a building will not have to meet all of the criteria "but a listed building will normally meet several". The buildings at the Maze patently do not qualify under "Age" or "Architectural Interest" and are said only to qualify in respect of "Historic Interest". However, the DOE’s own Listing Criteria expressly states "usually a building will meet other criteria as well as being of historic interest. Where this is not the case the historic associations must be strong."
“Mrs Foster has also revealed to me that the decision to list the buildings was not equality proofed. Section 75 is quite specific. It bestows on the DOE a statutory duty in carrying out its functions to have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity and to have regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between persons of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group. Anyone at all acquainted with Northern Ireland would know that to elevate the site of the highly politicised "dirty protest" and IRA hungerstrike to listed status is inescapably divisive and capable of provoking equality consideration. Yet, bizarrely the decision was not equality proofed, and Mrs Foster seemed unconcerned.
“When Sammy Wilson took up office in DOE I again raised the issue of the Maze and again a DUP Minister chose to defend the decision to list the ugly buildings at the Maze.
“To now say that he has asked his officials to investigate the potential to delist the Maze is nothing but bluster. Two consecutive DUP DOE Ministers have stood over the questionable decision and therefore given the proponents of the Maze ammunition to fight any moves to reverse it.
“It is clear that TUV’s campaign on the Maze has resonated with voters. Mr Wilson’s announcement is a direct reaction to the stick the DUP were getting on the doorsteps from people who had read about the DUP’s sellout on the Maze in TUV election literature.”
