Allister poses tough questions to DARD Minister
17 April 2010
TUV Leader Jim Allister has commented adversely on the feet-dragging in putting together a package for potato and vegetable farmers hit savagely by the January weather. “Here we are, three months on, and only now is DARD getting round to meeting DFP to discuss the losses, with any help probably still some distance away.
“Devolution should be about improving delivery and efficient responses to urgent needs, but, instead, we get months of deliberation and at the end of it very little product. Where is the good, caring, responsive government we were promised?
“As an Opposition politician, unfettered by any governmental alliance with the Sinn Fein Minister, I can and will speak out when DARD drags its feet and fails to deliver for farming. I will not remain silent when that which ought to be done remains undone and when the wrong priorities are struck.
“I must also question how DARD is being run at present. With the Minister engaged in the political fight of her life to hang on to her seat at Westrminster, even though she won’t attend, just who is running the department over these coming weeks and where is the minister’s primary focus – fighting Fermanagh & South Tyrone or fighting for farmers?
“We can’t afford a part-time Minister any more than Fermanagh & South Tyrone can afford an absentee MP.”
