Lack of Transparency 
“Transparency, accountability, openness and independence at all levels of government and in the administration of government are to be encouraged. Of course, the Northern Ireland Office has not always practised such transparency in government. We could do with a bit more transparency in government in Northern Ireland.”
Jeffrey Donaldson, MP ( Lagan Valley)(1)

 Frustrated by the lack of public information on the stadium plans we decided to take advantage of the right of access afforded by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. We requested:

• The feasibility studies on site selection that ruled out the 11 of the 12 nominated sites;
• The business plan for the 42,500-capacity stadium at the Maze;
• Minutes of meetings and correspondence between the SIB, Government departments and sports governing bodies; and
• Any economic appraisals, environmental impact assessments and any other impact assessments.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, anybody may request information from a public authority which has functions in England, Wales and/or Northern Ireland. The Act confers two statutory rights on applicants:

• To be told whether or not the public authority holds that information; and if so,
• To have that information communicated to them(2).

In general terms, the public has "the right to know", unless certain exemptions (e.g. national security) are deemed to apply. Authorities are also permitted to withhold information if it is deemed not to be in the public interest to release it.

 Firstly, the SIB never confirmed what information it holds – “(the SIB) has now completed its search for this information and wish to advise you that it is not intended to release all of this information”. It later describes this information as “these papers”(3).

 Secondly, the SIB refused the request releasing instead "terms of reference for the business planning, site selection and economic appraisal exercises; and an extract from the executive summary of the site selection technical report". This was only after they had arbitrarily extended the 20-day time limit for making a decision.

Remarkably, the terms of reference released, related to the original business plan for a multi-sports stadium and NOT the Terms of Reference for the new business plan for the 42,500 stadium at Maze.

To justify its decision not to disclose these documents, the SIB claimed that the information would cause disruption so great that it "would be likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs".

The decision to keep secret these documents merely intensified suspicions among supporters about the veracity of the business plans, economic appraisals, feasibility studies, and the whole Maze project generally.

What could possibly be contained in these documents that would be so devastating as to cause disruption so great that the SIB would be unable to meet its objectives?

A subsequent complaint forced the SIB into explaining further what this “disruption” would be. In December 2005, the SIB revealed that it believed that “there is a real danger that the sporting partners who are integral to taking the proposal forward for a policy decision, would withdraw if disclosure were to occur”.(4)

It was also revealed that the likely response of supporters to the release of the documents was a factor used to make the decision to keep them secret!

In the same letter, the SIB also revealed that there is no definitive "business plan". Instead "the term business plan refers to a dynamic set of information which has undergone various iterations which has been and is still evolving". In other words, no matter how the circumstances change, no matter what evidence is produced, the business plan can and will always be changed to produce the same result (i.e. in favour of the Maze).

Supporters are not asking to see civil servants' advice to ministers, or discussion papers or drafts: we want to see completed pieces of work that are the basis of plans to spend over £85m of taxpayers' money on a major capital project that is going to be the home of the Northern Ireland team for the next 50 years.

How can it possibly be in the "public interest" to keep these documents secret? What is contained in these documents that would cause one of the sports to withdraw?

Finally 20 months after asking for the documents we succeeded in getting some released – we can see why they didn’t want to release them – they are hardly strong endorsements of the Maze.

 They can be viewed here

(1) Hansard, Column 1602, 10 th March 2004

(2) http://www.foi.gov.uk/

(3) SIB Response, 20 th October 2005 (SIB ref 0205)

(4) SIB Response, 2 nd December 2005 (SIB ref 0205)