Overseas travel by a handful of MLAs to series of conferences across the globe this year cost the Assembly almost £19,000.
Four DUP and one Ulster Unionist member of Stormont’s Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) travelled to destinations that included Australia, Malaysia and the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena.
The association’s chair Jonathan Buckley was among delegates from current and former British territories at last month’s conference in Sydney, which cost the public purse £7,500.
Last week, The Irish News revealed that assembly chief executive Lesley Hogg attended the same conference at a cost of £7,482.
According to the assembly, the annual event allows parliamentarians to “come together to discuss and debate topical issues affecting the whole Commonwealth”.
Mr Buckley travelled to Australia on behalf of the regional CPA after speaker Edwin Poots was unable to attend.
In September, in his capacity as the association’s Stormont chair, he also went to the “advanced parliamentary development residency programme” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for six nights, at a cost of £851.
Four MLAs – the DUP’s Michelle McIlveen, Paul Frew and Phillip Brett, along with the UUP’s Steve Aiken – spent seven nights at the association’s conference on the island of St Helena in May this year, at a total cost of £10,485. Assembly chief executive Ms Hogg also attended at an additional cost of £1,345.
The event held on the remote island, some 1500 miles south of the equator, was billed as the 53rd conference for the “British Isles and Mediterranean region”.
DUP Strangford MLA and former agriculture minister Ms McIlveen also attended a Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) conference in Malta. The three-day trip in March cost the assembly £489.
MLAs did not attend any CPA events during the two years the institutions were dormant from February 2022.
The cost of sending MLAs and assembly officials to the association’s conferences this year has been more than £30,000.
Earlier this month, the assembly voted to increase its own budget for the forthcoming year by 10% to £64.2m.
People Before Profit’s Gerry Carroll, the sole assembly member to vote against the increase, said public money was being “wasted to fund MLA jet-setting, while working class communities continue to struggle with the daily cost of living”.
“Executive parties that impose austerity on the public apparently insist that their own MLAs travel in luxury,” he said.
“The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association styles itself as a vehicle to promote parliamentary democracy and good governance yet spending extortionate sums of public money on overseas trips to further the cause of the CPA’s neocolonial project is completely undemocratic and a clear example of inept governance.”
Mr Carroll said the public deserved “basic accountability from their elected representatives”, including disclosure of the purpose and outcome of the overseas trips.
Mr Buckley told The Irish News that the regional CPA branch played a “vital role in fostering the exchange of ideas, promoting democracy, and contributing to the shared values of the Commonwealth”.
He said MLAs’ attendance at overseas conferences “ensures Northern Ireland’s voice is heard on issues of mutual interest across the 56 member nations”.
“These opportunities allow members from across the Northern Ireland Assembly – regardless of political affiliation – to engage with representatives from other regions and nations, share best practices, and strengthen parliamentary democracy,” he said.
The Upper Bann MLA said the conferences were also attended by Westminster representatives and members of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd.
A statement from the Assembly Commission said the Stormont legislature is represented in “many international and inter-parliamentary bodies” that provide opportunities for politicians and officials to meet counterparts in other jurisdictions “to build relationships and networks, share best practice, discuss common challenges and identify opportunities for cooperation”.
“It makes sense that the assembly takes proportionate advantage of the training, conferences and other opportunities available to develop its approaches to scrutiny and other parliamentary processes,” the statement said.
