Councillor says at Belfast City Hall 'We are not even entirely sure how the decision has been made, or what it is.”
Councillor says at Belfast City Hall "We are not even entirely sure how the decision has been made, or what it is. ”Sinn Féin and DUP have been accused of a “community carve-up” over a funding pot worth over a third of a million pounds, including £100,000 for Gaeltacht street signage.pushed through a proposal from DUP Councillor Ian McLaughlin, with an amendment by Sinn Féin, to criticism from smaller parties who said the largest parties were “carving-up” the city without any due-process.
Councillor Ian McLaughlin successfully proposed an amendment to committee minutes, that the council agrees to pay 47 discretionary funding support requests, and agrees funding a total of £339,342. This money will be allocated from “non-recurrent community capacity building monies”, including the council Growth Fund for 2026/27.
He accepted an amendment from Sinn Féin that also asks for a report to come back to the committee, allocating up to £100,000 for dual language signage in the extended Gaeltacht Quarter, as identified in the Irish Language Policy. During secret meetings, away from the press and public, during the restricted item “request for funding” at the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee May 22, elected members agreed that an application process for discretionary fund requests be implemented and capped to a maximum of £5,000 per applicant for requests that did not fit into any other funding streams.
This agreement appears to have been dispensed with in the successful DUP amendment at full council. Councillor Ian McLaughlin at the secret meeting proposed solely that the council agreed to fund the 47 discretionary funding support requests with £339,242. This fell, with only three supporting it, and 13 against.
After agreeing the Sinn Féin amendment for £100,000 for Irish language signage, Councillor McLaughlin’s proposal sailed through the full council on Monday with 37 votes in favour, from Sinn Féin, the DUP and the UUP. 18 voted against, from Alliance, the SDLP, the Greens, and People Before Profit. Alliance Councillor Sam Nelson said at the full council meeting: "I am deeply concerned about this decision, which was made at committee, and proposed tonight.
We are well overdue reviewing this discretionary fund. We have had a number of issues over the years with how requests are dealt with, but it goes even further this time.
“The money is usually sitting in a discretionary fund, kept for that purpose, and we look at underspend at the end of the year and if we are able to fulfil those requests. This time the money isn’t even there. There wasn’t even close enough to cover these requests in the discretionary funds.
“What has been done is to find money from wherever we can. That is not the way to do public funding. It is not acceptable for this council to just cherry pick when it is going to fund organisations and when it is not.
” He said: “I don’t think we should be making decisions like this - we are talking about close to half a million pounds of rat payers money - and we are not even entirely sure how the decision has been made, or what it is. ” He said: “There is no due process whatsoever, other than to make it more palatable to put this decision through for the two largest parties. That is not the way to do funding.
I am not happy. I thought we had started to move away from this kind of behaviour at City Hall, but this is us right back in the mix of carve-up funding, without any proper process. ”Sinn Féin Councillor Ciaran Beattie said the £100K proposal for Gaeltacht funding was made in May 2025. He said: “This proposal has been there over a year, it is mapped out, there are letters of support, everything is there to do it.
” People Before Profit Councillor Michael Collins said: “The big parties can apparently whip out any figure they want out of their back pocket, propose it at full council and expect it will be passed. Apparently due diligence and process belongs to the smaller parties here, and individual councillors, but whenever Sinn Féin and the DUP decide to essentially carve-up funding, it is no issue to go through the proper process. It smacks of hypocrisy.
”DUP Alderman Dean McCullough said: “We don’t take our lead from anyone else, and certainly no political party. There is no carve-up.
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