The evaluation of Invest Northern Ireland’s (INI) selective financial assistance (SFA) scheme was contracted to research company SQW Consulting in September 2012 at an expense of £79,982 to the taxpayer.

SFA is the ‘most significant’ programme offered by INI to provide financial assistance to companies for investment and employment projects. It’s their main incentive for wooing foreign multinationals to NI (or, in civil servant speak, Foreign Direct Investment).

Two previous pieces of research have taken place into the effectiveness of SFA grants – one covering the period 1983/84 to 1996/97 and the other looking at 1997/8 to 2003/04.

The new research, investigating the period 2004/05 to 2010/11 and intended to outline how effective SFA has been over that period , was originally due in December 2012 but was pushed back to March 2013.

David Sterling, an accounting officer at the DETI, told the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee in February that the initial delay was because the Scottish Government had got involved with the evaluation.

He said: “That is a positive development, because it means that we are now able to take account of what the Scots are doing with their regional assistance, which is similar to our selective financial assistance.”

Sterling added:”The methodology that the advisers are using has been agreed and is being adopted by the Scottish Government as well. The evaluation will take three months longer, but the outcome will be much better and more robust.”

But in a response to a question tabled by MLA Leslie Cree in March, Arlene Foster, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, said that the report would be completed in June, six months later than originally expected.

‘Promoted’ not ‘created’ 

The new report will be of great interest to Invest NI watchers. Over the last year, the organisation has come under fire for its job creation and FDI record. Our own Lyra McKee published a three-part investigation into their job creation practices. Just today, the Press Association reported that it may be another 5 years before “meaningful data” on jobs created is available.

There may be trouble ahead for the SFA scheme

Northern Ireland was eligible under the European Commission’s Regional Aid Guidelines (RAG) to offer state aid to companies in the form of SFAs at assistance levels between 30% (for large companies) and 50% of total project costs.

However, because the province is no longer considered an underprivileged area, from January 2011 that level dropped for large companies in Belfast to 10%, 15% for the rest of Northern Ireland and 35% for small and medium sized companies outside of the capital.

After 2013, under the Commission’s rules, Northern Ireland will lose its 100% assisted area status, meaning that only a percentage of the province will have access to schemes like SFA and companies with more than 250 would be prohibited from receiving any state aid.

The changes also mean that employers based in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s economic hub, would be excluded because of the capital’s above-average GDP.

However, Foster, speaking during a debate concerning EU regional aid at the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) in April, suggested that the Commission may not proceed to prohibit state aid to large companies.

She added: “I have been very encouraged that the commission has recently signalled that it will not proceed with that proposal in the face of very strong opposition, not just from the UK, but other member states.”

Foster stated that she would continue to lobby the Westminster government and the European Commission to ensure the 100% assisted area status was retained.

We asked both Invest NI and SQW for comment but neither has responded as of yet. We’ll update here if they do.

“It could be years before meaningful data on whether jobs created or retained by Invest NI is available, it was revealed.

The Government’s main economic development organisation spent almost £520 million on selective financial assistance over the past decade yet systems to track actual posts have only recently been put in place, the Assembly’s spending watchdog said.

Five of the largest companies which received Invest NI grants worth almost £145 million before 2009 could not supply details of jobs lost during that period, a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.”

As longtime Muckraker readers will be aware, we exposed INI’s dodgy job targets (known as “jobs promoted”) last year, in a three-part series with the now sadly defunct The Kernel. In short: until recently, INI didn’t measure the number of jobs it created. It measured “jobs promoted”. So if a business plan promised to create 20  jobs in West Belfast, INI would tell the press that “20 new jobs have been created in Andytown!” and the press sold the story to the masses. Everything looked rosy, with all these new jobs being created by American companies. Yet no one actually followed up to find out if they actually existed.

The PA report also says that we may not have any “meaningful data” on INI’s job creation record until 2017.

If that’s true, it’ll be a full 17 years after their predecessor, the Industrial Development Board (IDB), was berated by the Westminster PAC for failing to track job creation properly. From my report last year:

“A report by Westminster’s Public Accounts Committee, published in 2000, was extremely critical of how IDB measured job creation through FDI – the same way Invest NI continues to do it. One concern raised by the Committee was that by only measuring “jobs promoted”, the process could be easily manipulated.”

I know things move slowly in the public sector but if it takes your organisation 17 years to correct a problem, you probably don’t deserve a pay rise.

This became clear to me while researching my book on Northern Irish politician Robert Bradford.

The six degree game

The Muckraker has an office in Farset Labs, Belfast’s only hackerspace. I was working there last week when one of Farset’s founders, Andrew Bolster, walked in. His grandmother had died recently; I asked him how the funeral had went.

“It went grand. Donaghadee Methodist Church was packed to the rafters.”

My ears pricked up at that sentence. Robert had connections to Donaghadee and also happened to be a Methodist minister.

It turns out that Bolster’s Grandfather was also a Methodist minister. That’s when the conversation got really interesting. I remembered that a Reverend Bolster had served with Robert in Fermanagh. He’s briefly mentioned in A Sword Bathed in Heaven, a biography of Robert penned by his wife. Bolster the 3rd confirmed that it was his Grandad.

I’ve known Bolster for 3 or 4 years. He’s a good friend. Yet in all the months I’ve been working on this book, I had no idea that he had an indirect connection to Reverend Bradford. [I also had no idea he was the grandson of a Methodist minister. Those who know him will agree that the apple didn't just fall far from the tree, it flew over the orchards *cough*.]

Northern Ireland too small – or the world smaller than we think?

This is just one of a few insane connections I’ve discovered over the last few months:

- A friend of one of my best friends is a great-niece of Harold McCusker, the former UUP MP for Armagh and a good friend of Robert’s [I haven't talked to her about the project, though].

- The best friend of our Editor, Claire Cromie, is the granddaughter of Roy Magee, a Presbyterian minister who was one of Robert’s closest friends and led his funeral service. I discovered this link one night when Claire posted Magee’s obituary on Facebook.  [Note: I haven't spoken to Magee's granddaughter about the book.]

- Robert’s election agent, Raymond, was in a go-karting club with my friend’s brother [who we'll call James]. That was how I found him and his wife [who was Robert's personal secretary] after months of searching. Raymond and James  were both directors of the go-karting club. Going through Companies House records, I recognised James’s name and thought it a bit of a coincidence that there was a man with the same name as my mate’s brother. I called my mate: “Is your brother in to go-karting by any chance?” James kindly passed my number on to Raymond and he and his wife [also very kindly] agreed to talk to me [you'll see the interview in the book when it's published].

When I told Bolster about all the other weird connections that had cropped up during my research, he said “You have to write a post about this.”

Other than being oddly coincidental, I think it shows how potential sources can be within touching distance without your knowledge. Talk about six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

“While we have not reduced our service to the trans gender community in any way, demand is currently outstripping our resources, and we are unable to accept new referrals at the moment. This is a temporary measure and should be resolved in a matter of weeks, and we will be keeping in touch with those patients concerned.

Discussions are also ongoing with the Health and Social Care Board on how the services for gender identity might be expanded.”

Things aren’t looking too good for Northern Ireland’s transgender community.

Last week, patients awaiting treatment at the Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) – the North’s only health service for transsexuals – received letters saying new patients aren’t being accepted for the “foreseeable future”, due to “staffing difficulties”.

The GIC, based on the outskirts of Belfast, is part of the Centre for Psychotherapy. When patients are admitted, they’re tested for Gender Identity Disorder (the medical diagnosis given to transgender people). If they’re diagnosed, gender confirmation therapy begins – a process that can include vocal training, hormone replacement therapy and surgery.

The move is a huge blow to the trans community in NI.

“It’s likely to negatively affect most people, some people more than others,” said one patient on the waiting list (who asked not to be identified) . “A lot of trans people experience severe gender dysphoria, which makes life difficult without help from hormonal therapy among other things. Many have a lot of mental anguish stemming from their transgender status, and putting off treatment is likely to make it worse for them.”

GIC is “seriously understaffed”, said sources

Multiple sources within the health community said that the Clinic had been struggling with phenomenal increases of new patients.

“The feeling I had got from the GIC and what the staff have been telling me is that they’ve been getting 1 referral a week but no resources to match that”, said one community worker.

“The clinic was never designed as a [standalone] Gender Identity Clinic”, said another source. “It’s a psychotherapy clinic. The GIC was only supposed to be a portion of their work but it has increased phenomenally over the last few years. The staff are as dedicated as they’ve always been but they are seriously understaffed. They’re working under incredible pressure for love of the job.”

Statement from Belfast Health and Social Care Trust

In a statement released to The Muckraker, the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (responsible for the GIC) said that current patients would continue to receive treatment:

“All our clients continue to receive high quality comprehensive support. There is a wide variation in the number of referrals, but on average we receive seven new referrals each month from all over Northern Ireland.”

The Trust also admitted that the clinic is staffed by just 3 employees, a consultant psychiatrist and two practitioners “who also provide complex psychosexual dysfunction therapies.”

Update 13/05/13 10:19am: We’ve slightly edited Belfast Trust’s statement. In response to a question from The Muckraker about whether current patients would continue to receive treatment at the clinic, they said: “There is no reduction to the Gender Identity Service provided by the Belfast Trust.” This caused some confusion among readers as they thought the Trust was denying that new patients were being turned away. We have consequently edited out this sentence for clarity.

Thankfully, with the Missing Children story, we’ve had some luck, thanks to a wonderful staff member at the Linen Hall Library.

I’ve written about Paula before (not her real name). She’s a librarian at the Linen Hall who has been helping me research my book on Robert Bradford MP. Her help has been invaluable and more than worth the £6 monthly membership fee. [Actually, she was helping me long before I became a member - which was why I signed up]. Every time I’ve come close to giving up on the book or another story, she pulls a new piece of information out of the archives. She laughs when I tell her she’s like an angel, sent to help me out.

She reads this blog regularly. After reading about our difficulties with the PSNI, she went digging through the library archives and struck gold.

It turns out that, for some reason, the Northern Ireland Office spent years monitoring NI press coverage of children. They collected the clips in a series of thick, hardcover books. I’m currently combing through them for old news reports; I’m assuming that there will be a few news clips on searches for missing children. Fingers crossed.

Since I appealed for help in cataloguing the number of children who went missing, a number of people have approached us with information. I’m currently following up a number of leads. If you have any information, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

MONDAY: ‘The Russians are coming’ by Darragh MacIntyre

You can watch the film here.

TUESDAY: ‘Community resolutions’ used in 10,000 serious violence cases’ by @BBCNews

You can read the story here.

WEDNESDAY: ’2,000 violent offenders let off’ by Aly Walsh

You can read the story here.

THURSDAY: ‘Ex-MPs demand public money to tour the country’ by @MattChorley

You can read the story here.

The Defamation Act 2013 has been hailed as a great liberal reform.

The law means Britain’s notorious libel laws will be curbed and freedom of speech will be improved.

It is long overdue. The country had become a desirable location for ‘libel tourists’ looking to settle scores in foreign lands (more on this below, see Background: Why the Defamation Act is so crucial).

However, the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) decided to block the extension of the Defamation Act to the province.

Initially, the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) stated it did not secure an executive decision in time to pass the legislation, but Adrian Rutherford, reporting in the Belfast Telegraph, suggested the decision was taken by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness’s department, the Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM).

With a sniff of lead and the public interest in mind, The Muckraker sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to OFMDFM, asking for documents showing any correspondence from Robinson and McGuinness to the DFP regarding or mentioning the Defamation Act.

We were declined the information on ‘public interest’ grounds.

The department’s reply is here: Defamation Decision FOI.

We still intend to find out some more information on the subject as it’s such an important issue. Can you help? Should we re-word our FoI (see below) or maybe you have some other recommendations? Get in touch.

Background: Why the Defamation Act is so crucial

As libel reform campaigner and commentator Nick Cohen explained: ”Our politicians and judges welcomed actions from corporations at home that were clearly designed to use the crushing power of money to intimidate critics into silence, and from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, Hollywood paedophiles, Islamist fanatics and Saudi petro-billionaires.”

The law also created a chilling effect. Journalists would have to run a cost/benefit analysis before even thinking about pursuing a story, taking into account the hefty fees they and their publication would have to cough up on defeat.

For years the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong kept drug doping allegations at bay, largely because English libel law allowed him to financially attack his critics.

The science writer Simon Singh’s life was nearly ruined thanks to libel law after he dared to criticise the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) in 2008.

In fact, lawyer and journalist David Allen Green, who was involved in defending Singh, noted that the modern movement for libel reform is associated with the campaign to defend Singh.

With all these facts in consideration, it would seem in the public interest for Stormont to accept the Defamation Act.

Muckraker FoI

“Please can you provide the following information:

1. All communication from First Minister Peter Robinson and his office regarding and mentioning the Defamation Bill 2012-2013 (now known as the Defamation Act 2013) sent to the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP), including communication to ministers and civil servants in this department, between and including January 1 2013 and April 27 2013.

2. All communication from Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and his office regarding and mentioning the Defamation Bill 2012-2013 (now known as the Defamation Act 2013) to the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP), including communication to ministers and civil servants in this department, between and including January 1 2013 and April 27 2013.

I look forward to your reply.”

Now, we want to reach out to you directly for help.

Why is this story important?

This story is important for 2 reasons:

1) With the war going on, it’s unclear what resources the RUC (NI’s old police force) would have dedicated to finding children who went missing, especially if they weren’t found quickly. Now is the time to examine that data and ask questions. How many children are still missing? What did the RUC do to find them? What is the PSNI doing now to find out what happened to them?

2) By casting a fresh spotlight on these cases, we may encourage new witnesses to come forward and speak to the police. With the war over, there is less fear of speaking out or to the authorities. Fresh press coverage could jog memories.

What you can do to help

It’s simple: do you know of a child who went missing between 1969 and 1997 in Northern Ireland? Get in touch. You can contact me via email (lyra at muckraker dot me) or Twitter.

We will include this information in a searchable database that will be shared with the Public and other members of the press. We’ll also be gathering old press reports and photographs about each child and their disappearance to build fuller profiles (which we’ll also share with you). We want to build a map of the disappearances so that you can see how many children went missing in your own area during The Troubles.

If you have any questions, feel free to ping me.

Claire has been with The Muckraker since late December, assisting in the background and working on some neat stories. She is a digital journalist at the Belfast Telegraph. Prior to the Bel Tel, she was a news editor for a weekly newspaper chain in England, having worked her way up from being a lowly reporter (ahem).

As Editor, Claire will mainly be giving me a hard time, making sure I don’t say anything libellous and overseeing our new secret project (being announced in June).

Just joking: she’ll be keeping The Muckraker in order, helping us to do bigger and better stories and, most importantly, hold the powerful to account. Our goal is to become a sustainable non-profit and hire more reporters, making Northern Ireland a better place by exposing the evil and wrongdoing that happen here. With the #newsecretproject, we’ll be beefing up our investigative coverage and growing our presence in NI. She’ll be guiding that effort.

Below are a few questions I imagine some of you will have so I’ll do my best to answer them. If you have any other questions that aren’t listed here, ping me on Twitter or via email.

Lyra, are you leaving The Muckraker?

Nope! I’m just tightening things up. Honestly, the only reason I was an Editor in the first place was by default. So I wouldn’t even say I’m “stepping down”. I founded the site so editing as just another thing on my to-do list. I wasn’t really an “Editor”. So I see this move as part of the site’s growth. It’s growing from adolescence into adulthood.

I knew that if I wanted The Muckraker to grow and make a real difference, I had two choices: 1) Commit fully to being the Editor, or 2) Ask someone else to do it. I couldn’t continue as both reporter and Editor. I had to pick one or the other. I picked reporting because it’s what I love.

That leads me to the other problem: time. My Mum had life-changing surgery last year and between editing the site, reporting, studying for my Masters degree and doing my day job, I haven’t spent as much time with her as I’d like to. That has to change.

Thirdly, I’m not very good at traditional editing. I love my gig at Mediagazer because it’s more about social media and curation than traditional editing (so in this context, it doesn’t really count). But dealing with staff, finances and potential partners is not something that comes naturally to me. I’m the journalistic equivalent of a geek who just likes to code. The biggest contribution I can make to The Muckraker is as a reporter, asking tough questions. And that’s what I’ll be doing. From now on, I’ll be handling the health and human rights beat as well as taking on general assignments.

Lastly, as well as being a nice person, Claire is an incredible Editor. She has experience of putting publications together and producing great journalism. And she loves editing and investigative journalism. I love reporting and investigative journalism. It’s a match made in heaven. I’ll still be involved in all the important decisions involving the site.

Will the voice/style of the site change?

Nope, we’ll continue as before, just in a slightly more organised fashion!

What’s this new project you’re launching in June?

It’s a secret. You’ll find out in June. But Northern Irish politicians will sleep slightly less soundly at night forever after.

What beats will you be covering?

Politics, religion, human rights, health, tech and business. The wonderful Ian Silvera will be taking over the tech and business beat. I’ll be covering health and human rights plus the rest until we can hire another reporter. It’s a lean operation but everyone is pitching in and helping out. In fact, now that we have a real Editor on board, I’ll be able to concentrate more fully on reporting.

Questions?

Feel free to tweet Claire or myself  or alternatively, email us: first name at muckraker dot me.

So is the risk of reporting them. Northern Ireland is not the friendliest of places for muckraking journalism. In 2001, investigative reporter Marty O’Hagan was murdered by a local terrorist group. In December, a Belfast Telegraph journalist was attacked while covering the loyalist flag protests. That same week, a pipe bomb was left outside the home of a press photographer.

When I started to get tip-offs about sensitive stories, I was wary of publicising them. I didn’t want to attract the wrong attention. That doesn’t feel very much like me. When I write about what I’m working on, I feel like I’m chatting directly to you, taking you with me as I interview sources and rummage through archives. My original goal when I launched The Muckraker was to show how the news is made (and to prove that not all journalists are evil). It’s an act of honesty. It enables you to hold me to account. It also makes me work harder.

So I’ve decided: I’m not going to hide what I’m working on anymore. It’s not me and it doesn’t feel right. If anyone wants to harm me because I’m asking questions, so be it. A black eye will only confirm that I’m on the right trail.

The stories I’m digging up: the Reverend Robert Bradford

One project I’ve been quiet about is a book I’m writing, a biography of the Reverend Robert Bradford.

Reverend Bradford was an Ulster Unionist MP for South Belfast. He was assassinated in 1981 while holding an advice session for his constituents. The IRA claimed responsibility for the murder.

There are a number of questions around Reverend Bradford’s passing. In the words of one source, the murder “just didn’t make sense”. While he was a respected politician, Bradford was not very high up in the UUP. He was a constituency man, more interested in fighting for his voters than playing politics. As one source remarked, “Why Bradford? Why not Paisley or Robinson, someone more important?”

This view was echoed by a number of reporters I spoke to, including one who described Bradford as being on “the fringes” of politics. The impression I’ve built so far is of a decent guy who wasn’t in politics for power or ego. I often joke that politicians with integrity are like unicorns; we’d like to think they exist but no one knows for sure because we’ve never seen one. Yet my research so far has convinced me that Reverend Bradford was alright. He was hardline – his public rhetoric was somewhat harsh and alienated a lot of Catholics, even though he didn’t hold any bitterness towards them as some of his Unionist colleagues did – but overall, he was a good guy. He worked hard for his constituents and fought for a tougher security policy on terrorism.

Which leads me to the question: why would the IRA want to murder him?

Lots and lots of research

I’ve spent hundreds of hours searching through archives in PRONI and Belfast’s Linen Hall Library and interviewing Reverend Bradford’s friends and colleagues (and other sources). I’m not sure when the book will be published – if at all. There are so many questions I want answers to and like any story, getting the answers is not always certain. Bradford’s wife published a biography about him in 1984; it’s a good read.

It was NYT reporter Brian Stelter who inspired me to go public about the book. While researching his book on morning television, he posted material to this Tumblr, showing readers what he was working on. He reminded me of why I started The Muckraker.

So from now on, you’ll be seeing the same stuff from me – excerpts from interviews, pieces of research and so on. I think it’ll take a few years to complete.

If you’d like to talk to me about this project or have any questions/information, please feel free to email me: lyra at muckraker dot me.