Auditor General tells Executive toimplement Maze plans

THE Northern Ireland Audit Office has told the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) that delivery strategies for the former Maze prison site must be implemented as soon as possible.

The Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland, Mr Kieran Donnelly, in a report to the Assembly on the transfer of former military and security sites to the executive, stated that plans for the site must be finalised.

He told the Assembly that OFMDFM must ensure that delivery strategies for the site are “finalised and implementation plans put in place as quickly as possible to enable the private sector to plan for investment.”

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Mr Donnelly also stated that: “All departments should clearly track and account for how ‘ring-fenced’ money is spent and ensure that the process is transparent to the Assembly and the local communities it is intended to support.”

It was also revealed in the report that the cost for the decontamination of the Maze prison site had run into millions of pounds.

“The experience from the Maze/Long Kesh site, where the cost of decontamination is expected to exceed £8.5 million, demonstrates the importance of carrying out due diligence checks to protect the Northern Ireland Executive from the financial burden of remediation and the cost of maintaining and in making sites safe and secure.”

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