DUP LEADER and First Minister Peter Robinson has made sweeping changes to his front-bench with three ministers bowing out of office.
Sammy Wilson was one of the big winners, promoted from the environment brief to Minister for Finance and Personnel.
As forecast, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has given up his finance portfolio – generally viewed as the most important department in the Northern Executive outside of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister posts – to pay more attention to his North Belfast Westminster seat.
Also exiting the Executive are the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure Gregory Campbell, who is MP and MLA for East Derry, and junior minister in the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister Jeffrey Donaldson, MP and MLA for Lagan Valley.
Mr Dodds is due to be given a special responsibility of resurrecting DUP political fortunes after the party’s disappointing showing in the European elections when candidate Diane Dodds took the third of the three seats. In all previous elections the DUP headed the poll. Sinn Féin’s Bairbre de Brún was poll-topper earlier this month.
Arlene Foster was expected to take the finance job but instead it went to East Antrim MP and MLA Mr Wilson, who as environment minister regularly was at the centre of controversy over his questioning of the causes of climate change. Ms Foster remains as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Industry – at her request, it is understood.
Former culture, arts and leisure minister Edwin Poots, MLA for Lagan Valley, returns to the Executive as Minister of the Environment.
North Belfast MLA Nelson McCausland is promoted to the post of Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, a move which is unlikely to please Irish language activists. Mr McCausland is an Ulster Scots enthusiast who is opposed to any notion of an Irish language Act.
His relationship with the GAA also will be closely studied. He said yesterday that because of his religious views he would not attend a GAA game on a Sunday but if invited he would consider attending a game on another day.
Sinn Féin MLA Barry McElduff said he knew it was a “big ask” but he hoped Mr McCausland would have the “ability to move beyond the narrow negative agenda of previous DUP culture ministers in relation to the Irish language, its speakers and their rights”.
Possibly, the biggest surprise in Mr Robinson’s reshuffle was the appointment of new junior minister, Robin Newton, an East Belfast MLA and veteran of Belfast City Council politics. There was speculation that up-and-coming Strangford MLA Simon Hamilton was in line for such a promotion.
Mr Robinson’s reshuffle is part of his drive to “reconnect” with grassroots unionist support. Among the reasons cited for the party’s poor European performance were MPs’ expenses and double-jobbing.
His move meets his recent commitment that all but one of his Westminster colleagues would leave ministerial office.
The new Ministers will take up their posts when the Assembly goes into recess on Friday, July 3rd.
Green MLA Brian Wilson welcomed the departure of Mr Wilson from environment. He said in his year as minister he “put the cause of climate change back by at least 10 years”.
Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister said the reshuffle “amounted to nothing more than a rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic” such was the “disconnection” of the DUP from its support base.
Mr McCausland was twice ejected from the Assembly chamber for saying that Gerry Adams was a former IRA leader and Mr Allister queried how he could accept a post when Martin McGuinness, who admitted he was in the IRA, was Deputy First Minister.
Ulster Unionist MLA David McNarry said the reshuffle was irrelevant.
“They are do-nothing Ministers locked in a cosy political carve-up with Sinn Féin for the mutual benefit of those two parties but which is doing nothing for the people of Northern Ireland.”