DUP leader wants O’Neill to face committee scrutiny next week - but ministry silent on First Minister's attendance

​This week, the Executive Office (TEO) committee decided to ask Ms O’Neill to come back and answer more questions, amid continual developments since her last evidence session over a fortnight ago.

However, a Sinn Fein MLA on the committee complained that the First Minister has already answered “an hour’s worth of questions” on the matter – and claimed attempts to scrutinise her on child safeguarding issues within Sinn Fein were going into “circus territory”.

The scandal began last month when two Sinn Fein press officers resigned after providing job references to the British Heart Foundation (BHF) for a former colleague who was under investigation for child sex offences. Michael McMonagle subsequently admitted 14 charges.

Since then, there has been a steady trickle of new information – only placed in the pubic domain because of the media, with Sinn Fein volunteering very little of the information itself.

During the First Minister’s last appearance at the TEO committee she said she did not see McMonagle standing yards from her – and had not engaged with anyone from the BHF. Photos were subsequently published by the BBC Nolan Show, showing her talking to the BHF chief Fearghal McKinney.

The News Letter subsequently revealed that Stormont authorities were not alerted by SF about the investigation into McMonagle – and his pass was never revoked. This newspaper also revealed he was employed by Michelle O’Neill for a period of three months – before the police investigation was underway – and at that time he was also working for a SF MP and the party. His other two jobs hadn’t been declared to authorities at Westminster.

An Assembly investigation into salaries and expenses is now underway, prompted by the questions swirling around the McMonagle case. Neither the First Minister nor the Assembly will say whether all the appropriate declarations were made by the then-deputy First Minister.

The party is also facing questions about why it didn’t reveal to the public that its former leader in the upper house of the Irish Parliament had resigned after sending inappropriate text messages to a 17 year old. Niall O Donnghaile admitted his involvement to the Irish News this week, just before a debate on SF’s handling of the then-unnamed party member who had quit over the messages.

In his weekly email to party members, DUP leader Gavin Robinson says “this week has shown us that for Sinn Fein, it’s the same old story of half-truths and cover-ups. The serious nature of the McMonagle scandal, followed by the O’Donnghaile scandal, demands that Sinn Fein’s leadership face real scrutiny.

“When our DUP members on the Executive Office Committee question Michelle O’Neill next week, it’s crucial that the First Minister tells the truth.

“The cover-ups are fooling no one”.

It emerged this week that the TEO committee has decided to provide the First Minister with the questions it intends to ask her in advance.

MLAs had to submit questions they intend to ask the First Minister to TEO officials by close of business on Friday – without any commitment that the First Minister will even appear.

The questions are currently being “considered” by the first and deputy first ministers’ private office.

The News Letter asked TEO if the First Minister and/or Junior Minister Aisling Reilly intend to attend the Executive Office committee in the coming week. There was no response.

There is uncertainty about whether the committee can legally ask the First Minister to attend without her DUP counterpart Emma Little Pengelly also in attendance, as it is a joint office.

An official told MLAs that sending advance questions would give Stormont’s legal department “a better idea of the precise things that we want to ask because there’s a very specific rationale for inviting them [the ministers]. It has to be to do with their statutory functions, it can’t be other peripheral things”.

He added that once questioning starts “there might be development in that discussion”.