SDLP Balmoral Councillor Claire Hanna has said that the evidence given at Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) regarding the sales of a former Army base on the Malone Road, which was subsequently developed as the up-market Malone Square apartment development, is deeply disturbing and says a lot about the incompetence, and perhaps worse, of some in public service.

The prime two and a half acre site was sold in 2003 for £3.8 million without planning permission, £1million below its estimated market value to a mystery buyer, who then resold it on the same day.

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She said: "Frankly, I am sceptical of the explanation given by civil servants that the transaction files were destroyed in 2010, even though an Audit Office investigation on the whole transaction had commenced in 2009.

"It is good to see that all parties represented on the PAC were in agreement that the transaction was deeply disturbing and should be subject to public accountability.

"The lack of commerciality among some of our senior civil servants is breath-taking. Time and time again it seems so easy to 'wipe their eyes' and it should be elementary that a claw-back clause be inserted in any contract for sale of this type.

"Even if the files have been 'destroyed' there should be evidence in the records of the Lang Registry or the Planning Service to show who the mystery buyer was. It is outrageous that some unnamed individual made £1 million profit in a single day. Why is the identity of that person not in the public domain? Even if the civil service files are gone, it should be easy enough to identify the solicitors for the transaction and, if necessary sub poena those files."

(CD/GK)