Sinn Fein questioned over apparent delay in repaying covid relief grants

By Rebecca Black, PA

Sinn Fein is facing questions around an apparent delay in repaying Covid relief cash meant for struggling businesses.

It has emerged that £10,000 grants were paid into three Sinn Fein party accounts in March.

MP and MLA constituency offices are ineligible for the Small Business Grant Scheme.

However, under the scheme a £10,000 payment was automatically sent to any firm in receipt of Small Business Rate Relief.

Sinn Fein said the money has been paid back.

The Department for the Economy confirmed that two payments were made in error to an elected representative and to a former elected representative, and a third to the office of a political party.

A spokesman said all three grants have been repaid.

A Sinn Fein spokesman said: “Three Sinn Fein offices received automatic and unsolicited payments of £10,000 under the Small Business Grant Scheme.

“Sinn Fein offices did not qualify and did not apply for the scheme and the monies have been returned to the LPS (Land & Property Services).”

The payments were reported on BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan Show on Wednesday.

The report said that West Tyrone MLA Maoliosa McHugh’s office was one of the three Sinn Fein accounts which received the payment.

Mr McHugh told the programme that he had contacted party officials to make arrangements to pay the money back “quite a while ago”, adding that he received confirmation earlier this week that it had been repaid.

DUP MP Gregory Campbell said he has asked the Commissioner for Standards to investigate.

“We are still in the dark as to exactly when Sinn Fein representatives found out about the error,” he said.

“The public are rightly questioning whether the cash would have been returned at all had the media spotlight not been shone in their direction.”

Mr Campbell also pressed Finance Minister Conor Murphy (Sinn Fein) to explain “exactly what went wrong in the rollout of this scheme”.

“I will be writing to the new Assembly Standards Commissioner to ask her to investigate statements by Maoliosa McHugh to establish whether he has breached the Code of Conduct in his handling of these issues,” he said.

“We will also be submitting questions to the relevant departments to establish when exactly these three £10,000 sums paid into Sinn Fein bank accounts were returned.”

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood queried whether Sinn Fein acted over the money before being approached by the media.

“The Small Business Grant Scheme, approved in the Executive by Sinn Fein ministers, was designed to support local employers suffering financial hardship and prevent them from going to the wall. For employers across the North, it was a lifeline,” he said.

“It is galling that three Sinn Fein offices received a £10k support payment, and appear to have done very little about it until they were asked by the media.”

TUV leader Jim Allister also queried how much time had elapsed before the money was paid back, and has also asked the Commissioner for Standards to investigate.

Fine Gael Senator Regina Doherty said Sinn Fein has “questions to answer”.

“Why did it take until now to uncover this after the payments would have been made last March? Has it all been paid back? And how did they receive the funding without applying for it?” she said.

“Despite their pleas of innocence, Sinn Fein face serious questions about this scheme. To date, they have not been forthcoming in their answers on this.”

Earlier this week it emerged that 52 wind turbine owners were also among those who received the payment.

The Department for the Economy has since ruled that sector ineligible for grants.

Some 24,700 grants were paid out under the scheme. Of those, it said 2% (452) may not have been eligible.

It has since recouped 70 of those payments and work is under way to recover all ineligible payments.

“The department has paid out more than £338 million to more than 32,000 businesses across the £10,000 Small Business Support Grant, the £25,000 Retail, Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Grant, and the NI Microbusiness Hardship Fund,” a spokesman said.

“The Small Business Grant Scheme was agreed by the NI Executive. This included eligibility criteria and payment processes.

“The Executive also approved the decision to make an automatic payment to those businesses in receipt of Small Business Rate Relief whose bank details were held by Land & Property Services for rating purposes.

“This was to ensure payments were made to as many businesses as possible, as quickly as possible given the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on businesses.

“In this context, there was always the potential that a small number of businesses would receive the support but would not require it. The Executive was aware of this risk.”