Councillor resigned from Housing Executive board after six months in role

1 year ago 476

Independent Councillor Paul McCusker resigned from the Housing Executive board after just six months in the role.

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons announced that he had appointed Cllr McCusker to the board on March 14 this year and he was expected to remain in post until the next local election in 2027.

However, Cllr McCusker tendered his resignation on August 30 this year.

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When approached by Belfast Live, Cllr McCusker said that he resigned as felt "restricted" about what he could speak about in the media.

"I couldn't speak on the news about homelessness. I couldn't do certain things, so it was quite limited in what I could do," he said.

"I prefer to be an advocate rather than being restricted on what I could do.

"I couldn't even bring people down to the housing centre to advocate on behalf of their application. They literally told me that I couldn't do a lot of things that I normally would do.

"I thought, no, I can't stick this, you know, it was even at the stage where they were going to remove homelessness from the board papers because there's a conflict [of interest] because I'm in The People's Kitchen. I was like, it's unbelievable."

A Housing Executive spokesperson said: “Cllr McCusker was appointed by the Department for Communities in February 2024, based on his role as member of the Northern Ireland Housing Council.

“On 30 August Cllr McCusker wrote to the Chair of the Housing Executive, copied to the Minister for Communities to tender his resignation as a Board member.”

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Source: www.belfastlive.co.uk
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