Alliance to veto year-round flags move…
ALLIANCE are to veto plans to fly the Union flag from all civic buildings and war memorials in Ards and North Down for 365 days a year.
The move to year-round flying was passed by a majority of seven votes at a council meeting a fortnight ago.
But Alliance’s 10 councillors are now set to use a controversial veto found in a loophole in the local authority’s rules to block the move, meaning the council will stick to its old flags policy.
The party’s decision has outraged local unionists who were enthusiastic about seeing the flag flying from five civic buildings and 13 war memorials throughout the year.
TUV councillor Stephen Cooper, the main driver of the year-round flags change, described Alliance’s move as ‘the very antithesis of democracy’ and ‘usurp[ing] the will of those elected into council’.
And DUP faction leader, alderman Stephen McIlveen, described Alliance invoking the veto as an ‘extremely disappointing’ decision that means the year-round change voted through two weeks ago ‘has next to zero chance of proceeding’.
Several politicians individually accused Alliance of being a de facto nationalist party that’s trying to eradicate unionism, while an online activist group called on local people to protest the veto at a Bangor City Hall council meeting near the end of this month.
Defending his party’s move, Alliance leader alderman Alan McDowell said that blocking the flags policy change would protect ‘sharing and inclusivity’ while ‘respecting those citizens who feel represented by the Union flag and those who do not’.
The veto exists due to a loophole in the council’s rules around ‘calling in’ its decisions.
Call-ins allow politicians to take a second pass at a policy change; they have to be run past lawyers, but if legal advice says the call-in is valid, the change is then taken back to the council for a second debate and a new vote.
But the second vote has to win a supermajority of at least 80% of councillors in order to pass.
The loophole comes about when a decision is called in on community impact grounds, that councillors fear it will adversely affect one specific group of people in the borough.
If community impact is cited, Ards and North Down Council’s rules state that the call-in has to go for a second debate and supermajority vote no matter what – even if lawyers say the call-in doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
The result is that any bloc making up more than 20% of the council has an effective veto on any decision. Alliance, the second largest party after the DUP, comprise 25% of the local authority.
This isn’t the first time the veto has been invoked, as a cross-party group of nine Ards unionists signed a community impact call-in late last year in an attempt to stop the council looking into the possibility of finding new office headquarters in Bangor.
The office call-in was abandoned after a last-minute deal that will see the council attempt to get more civic facilities and jobs in the Ards area.
But Alliance now look certain to follow through with their veto on the flags policy change, meaning this will be the first time the option of the loophole veto will have been used in full.
