Monday, February 14, 2011

Never a dull uninformed moment in NIHRC-land

Regular readers will imagine my uncontainable delight upon discovering that the N.Ireland Human Rights Commission now has its own magazine.

Full of empowered capacity-builders informing any excluded (and/or disadvantaged) reading how to become included stakeholders in civil society, it’s a must for all you participatory facilitators out there.

Or something, more or less, along those lines.

Anyway, now that the NIHRC has got their magazine up and running it can only be a matter of time (months? years? decades?) before Prof McWilliams’ diary is updated. Life for the esteemed capacity-builder appears to have finished round about March last year… pity, as I’m sure, like me, you’d love to read about her later working visits to, amongst other destinations, Southern California.

Something else missing is a bit of background to the recent positional changes at the Commission; Lord Laird has been also asking for a bit of clarity on the matter:
Lord Laird to ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have approved the creation of the post of Director of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and its salary range of £58,200 to £117,800; why the post of chief executive was abolished; what are the difference in duties and salary between it and the Director; what was the redundancy payment made to the last chief executive; and what reduction in funding has been agreed with the Commission by the Northern Ireland Office.
He's still waiting for an answer on that one.

Interestingly enough, the NIHRC has advertised the post in the Irish Times in the Republic, whilst seemingly omitting to inform the News Letter's readership of the upcoming position. How very forgetful of them.

Update

Re the last paragraph, the NIO did advertise the position in the News Letter on Thursday.

3 comments:

thedissenter said...

Amused by the piece on how NICCY spends money mostly on itself http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/this_quango_spends_90_of_its_money_on_itself_1_2401217 and despair that one of the few bits of legislation this Stormot lot have passed is to create another self-serving quango for oldies. NIHRC obviously isn't Stormont's responsibility, but seems to follow the same pattern of a body irrlevant to people on the ground and content to talk to others like itself on how important they all are. Whatever happened the bonfire of the quangos?

O'Neill said...

Just read it this morning, a prime example of the unaccountability of the organisations- they are now quite clearly being run for the benefit of the oligrachs rather than the original intended purpose.

Christy Walsh said...

The NIHRC is no more than a diners club for anyone who will caress their ego on what wonderful people they are. Will pictures of happy diners, courtesy of NIHRC, be published in their new magazine?

Re "NIHRC obviously isn't Stormont's responsibility, ..." Not anymore, I am not sure when the change occured, but if members of the public can no longer make direct formal complaints. The NIHRC has been afforded parlimentary protection and any complaints will only be considered by the Parlimentary Ombudsman??

"Life for the esteemed capacity-builder appears to have finished round about March last year… pity, as I’m sure, like me, you’d love to read about her later working visits to, amongst other destinations, Southern California." I can announce one possible entry in Monica's diary for 7 March might be to attend court in a case against the NIHRC?