Ulster Unionist Mike Nesbitt MLA, has highlighted the £18,000 spent by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister on external consultants, who were paid to review the work of a second set of consultants.

A Written Question from the Strangford MLA has revealed a total of £93,185 was spent on the consultation exercise following the publication of the draft strategy on Cohesion Sharing and Integration, including two five figure sums on consultants.

Mr Nesbitt said: “The CSI strategy has rightly been described as something that will impact every citizen of Northern Ireland, so I have no difficulty with OFMDFM doing what it can to ensure it seeks as wide a range of views as possible about its intended approach.

“Whatever way you dress up the language, they paid consultants to review consultants. They spent £22,945 on what they are calling “Independent Facilitators” who helped deliver 11 public meetings and 15 events for specific sectoral interest bodies.

“They then paid a further £18,052 on what they describe as “Independent Analysis” and the latter’s report makes clear that their terms of reference included an evaluation of the consultation process undertaken by the original group, and an assessment of how inclusive those meeting were. In other words, OFMDFM paid one group of external experts to comment on the work of another group of external experts.

“It is interesting to note that the total for the original Independent Facilitators is almost exactly double the costs recorded for staging the 26 events. Add in the cost of the second set of consultants and you find that for every pound spend on booking a hall or providing a tea or coffee, another four pounds was spent asking an external expert to analyse answers.

“In the current economic climate, this must be hard to justify. I imagine the electorate will be wondering why there is no in-house expertise in this area.”