Member's statement: Department for Infrastructure: Surrender of £181·3 Million
Member's statement by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on .
- MLA
- Dr Steve Aiken OBE
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 22 June 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Department for Infrastructure: Surrender of £181·3 Million
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5637690
Read the official Assembly record
Text
It must be said that £181·3 million is a lot of taxpayers' hard-earned money. It is money that is raised from local commuters, vehicle owners, farmers, local businesses, logistics companies and, above all, our constituents — those vital people whom we are elected to represent. That £181·3 million is the figure in capital expenditure that Liz Kimmins, the Sinn Féin Minister responsible for our infrastructure, sent back to the Department of Finance, because of her inability to spend money on our roads or anything else for that matter. I will say it again: £181·3 million. We know that the Department is dysfunctional. We know that her Department spends more on legal cases, fighting judicial reviews and being chastised by judges for legal ineptitude and on vesting land and ripping out hedges and fencing and then trying to unvest it and paying even more money to put back the fences and hedges that it took out. It is responsible for keeping our bloated legal and planning-consultant vultures in new holiday homes and Porsches, with apologies to vultures, Mr Speaker. No one is accountable or responsible for the debacle. It goes without saying that Sinn Féin's Minister Liz Kimmins refuses to take accountability or responsibility. We will not be expecting her to resign over the £181·3 million farce. We can hardly blame the current permanent secretary, as she has just taken up her post, but, surely, her predecessors must bear some accountability or responsibility, especially considering the senior civil servants' salary scale of between £146,000 and £163,000, with, of course, their taxpayer-funded pension contribution of 34·2% — £218,000 a year is nice remuneration for not spending £181·3 million. It is no surprise that they will not be resigning either. I will say it again: £181·3 million. On the basis of the highly inflated DFI costs of around £500 per pothole, that represents 362,000 potholes that the Department of ineptitude could have filled in over the past two years. Instead, that most dysfunctional Department, under the most inept Sinn Féin Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly and a series of grossly over-superannuated permanent secretaries, gave the money back. While we cry out for improved water infrastructure, the fixing of our roads, the building of the A5 and the progression of the York Street interchange project, people suffer daily on our roads, yet Liz Kimmins and her permanent secretaries gave £181·3 million back. It is little wonder that our electorate wonder why we have such a Department when it gives back £181·3 million. We have permanent secretaries who are pocketing pay packets of £200k-plus and Sinn Féin Ministers who are not accountable or responsible for anything. I hope that, next May, there will be an accounting for those inept and completely useless Ministers and Departments.
461 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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