You couldn’t make it up!

YOU really couldn’t make it up! No really, you could not make up the surreal world where public bodies across Northern Ireland have rates arrears of £4.5m.

Let’s get this straight now. Central government gives arms length bodies and executive non-departmental bodies (what the slow of thinking call quangos) money to do work.

They then expect them to give some of that money back in the form of rates.

This then needs to be administered by those arms length bodies, NDPBs and needs to be administered centrally to make sure that the money that was given out comes back...

Instead of this palaver, bureaucratic stupidity and deskbound paper and budget shuffling would it not be easier for the Department of Finance and Personnel to just say to all the departments – “chill out, we’ve got your rates covered.”

Might mean that some civil servants and public servants can do constructive work rather that getting money in, to give it back to the department that handed it out in the first place!