Maze Prison regeneration ‘limited to health and safety’

A Stormont body set up to oversee a £300m redevelopment of the former Maze prison site has said its role has been “essentially limited to health and safety”.

Plans to regenerate the site near Lisburn have been in limbo for almost 12 years due to a political row.

The high-security jail held paramilitary prisoners during the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles and was the site of republican hunger strikes in 1981 during which 10 inmates starved themselves to death.

It closed in 2000 and while most of the prison buildings have been demolished, some were retained.

The 350-acre former prison is one of Northern Ireland’s largest development sites in public ownership.

Bryan Gregory, interim chief executive of the Maze Long Kesh Development Corporation (MLKDC), said a “political resolution” was needed.

“What the answer to that is, I don’t know, but it is clearly in my mind a legacy issue that needs to be picked up and addressed,” he said.

In 2013, Stormont’s then First Minister Peter Robinson, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), blocked a plan to build a peace centre on the site.

It followed pressure from unionists who claimed the site would become a “shrine to terrorism”.

Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, then deputy first minister, later said that no further development would take place until the dispute was resolved.

Since then, the stalemate has led to many requests to visit the prison buildings being refused by the Executive Office – the joint government department of the first and deputy first ministers.

However, some parts of the site have been used, such as hosting the Balmoral Show – an annual agricultural event.

The Air Ambulance and Ulster Aviation Society are also based there.

Mr Gregory was speaking to the economy committee on Wednesday as members visited the site.

He said the MLKDC has had a “limited remit since 2013” which is “defined by our sponsor department, the Executive Office”.

This has been “essentially limited to health and safety matters, site security, essential maintenance” and supporting those currently using the site.

Mr Gregory said that “in addition to that formal remit, we have added in our business plan an aim to identify and explore options for consideration by ministers”.

Last year, it emerged the body in charge of Northern Ireland museums had been in talks about the future of the derelict jail.

Neil McIvor, MLKDC’s director of development, said they were “very preliminary discussions”.

Alliance Party assembly member David Honeyford said the Maze site was a “microcosm of Northern Ireland”.

“The potential is here, but we’re not realising it,” he said.

He urged the first and deputy first ministers to “move this forward and allow the potential to be actually realised”.

DUP assembly member Phillip Brett, chair of the economy committee, said the “economic opportunities here are huge”.

“But we’re also equally clear that we will never support the creation of a shrine to terrorism here,” he added.

Sinn Féin assembly member Emma Sheerin said there was a “shared objective across all parties” to realise the economic opportunities of the site.

She said “there are different perspectives on the past” and “everybody’s perspective should be respected”.