NI Assembly: £44,000 a month spent on TV services

The cost of TV broadcasting services at Stormont is £44,000 a month even though the assembly has been effectively shut since February 2022, BBC NI's Nolan Show has revealed.

A contract began in July 2022, shortly after the DUP refused to nominate a speaker and when Stormont was closed.

The Assembly Commission said the system must be maintained and kept ready.

It said it has always had a contract for the operation and maintenance of broadcasting sound and vision services.

The current one runs for six years, the commission said.

In a statement to The Nolan Show, it added: "Statutory responsibilities necessitate that plenary sittings and committee meetings are broadcast, streamed and recorded.

"Since May 2022, there have been five recall plenary sittings and the chamber has also been used for tributes to her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, tributes to the late Lord Trimble and to hold a sitting of the Youth Assembly.

"The assembly has not been dissolved and it could be recalled and begin normal working immediately.

"It falls to the Assembly Commission to ensure that the assembly is in a state of preparedness for the resumption of normal business."

'Hard to understand'

Political commentator Brendan Mulgrew told the Nolan Show on Wednesday that the situation was "baffling".

"The fact that it was signed up to when Stormont was down with no prospect of it coming back is very hard to understand," he said.

"We live here with political stalemates - rows, suspensions - so why would this contract have been entered into without some sort of clause?"

However, Former Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik said the £44,000 a month fee was "pretty good value".

"Financially, to get rid of this and try and reinstate it afterwards could be far more expensive," he said.

"This company can't sit around, they have to pay their staff. It would be a false economy and it would be practically dangerous to get rid of them."