Lisburn Councillor Palmer appears before Stormont committee

Councillor Jenny Palmer gave a candid interview to the BBC investigative journalists last year - claiming she was pressured to change her vote at a NIHE board meeting.

The vote related to the termination of a maintenance contract being operated by the firm Red Sky.

The Lisburn representative told the BBC at the time that advisor to the then social development minister Nelson McCausland, Stephen Brimstone, had been the person exerting the pressure.

She said: “He said ‘the party comes first – you do what you’re told, otherwise there is no point in being on the board’, if I wasn’t prepared to do what they asked me to do.”

Appearing before the social development committee at Stormont yesterday, Councillor Palmer said Mr Brimstone became aggressive when she refused to agree to his request.

She said a DUP press officer also told her “Brimstone’s toast” at one meeting.

She told the committee: “I asked him then: ‘What do you think will happen?’

“He said, ‘we need to protect the minister and yourself as an elected representative’.”

Following the Spotlight programme, the head of the civil service ordered the Department of Finance to carry out a fact-finding exercise into the conduct of the special advisor.