Ex-council boss had incentive to delete emails over perception she 'was too close to DUP,' court told

The former chief executive of Mid and East Antrim Council had an incentive to illegally delete emails "because of the perception that she was too close to DUP politicians", a court has been told.

Anne Donaghy, 56, of Clonmore Road in Dungannon denies three charges.

She is accused of deleting or attempting to delete an email in contravention of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act and also aiding and abetting another person to do so.

The emails were sent to Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politicians Arlene Foster and Gregg McKeen, forwarding on a letter Donaghy had sent to senior civil servants in London raising concerns about the safety of staff carrying out post-Brexit checks at Larne Port.

Her co-accused, 49-year-old Aaron McClelland, of Clonmakate Road in Portadown, faces one charge of attempting to delete an email, which he also denies.

He was described in court of having oversight of the FoI system at the council.

Ballymena Magistrates' Court was told on Monday that on 30 January 2021, Donaghy's PA sent a letter on her behalf to the Cabinet Office in London, setting out Donaghy's concerns about the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol.

In the letter, Donaghy said she had been advised by "local MPs" Ian Paisley, Sammy Wilson and Jeffrey Donaldson that she should write to the Cabinet Office about protocol-related issues.

She said "sinister graffiti" had appeared at Larne Port threatening the security of staff working at border control posts.

Border Control Posts (BCPs) were built at Larne harbour, and two other facilities in Northern Ireland as a consequence of Brexit.

They were for inspecting food and live animals when they arrived from other parts of the UK.

The DUP had criticised the arrangements.

On 31 January 2021, Donaghy forwarded the letter to the Cabinet Office on to Paisley, Wilson and Donaldson and later to Edwin Poots, the DUP's Agriculture and Environment Minister at Stormont at the time.

In the coming days she also sent it to the DUP leader on the council, Gregg McKeen, and DUP mayor Peter Johnston, as well as a personal email address of Arlene Foster, who was first minister at the time, and the then DUP economy minister Gordon Lyons.

A few days after the email to Foster, the council received a FoI request from Belfast Live journalist Brendan Hughes, who now works for the BBC.

He asked for correspondence, internally and externally at the council, relating to "alleged threats to staff" over the NI Protocol.

The council decided not to release this information based on health and safety and confidentiality grounds and informed Hughes of its decision in April.

A fortnight later, Donaghy appeared at a Stormont committee where she was questioned by MLAs, including Alliance's John Blair who appeared to have a copy of the letter sent to the Cabinet Office.

He asked her why she had sought the views of DUP politicians but not those from other parties.

The prosecution argued that this showed "by the end of April decisions around Larne Port and the Cabinet Office letter were under increased political and media scrutiny".

"One line of criticism was that Anne Donaghy had consulted with DUP to the exclusion of other parties," a prosecution barrister told the court.

"Anne Donaghy and her colleagues could have reasonably expected that other FoI requests would follow."

The court then heard a conversation recorded by one of Donaghy's PAs from 29 April 2021, in which Donaghy could be heard asking her to delete an email which had been sent to Foster, which her PA agreed to do.

She then asked her if the email had "gone anywhere" and replied "oh no" when her PA said it had "gone upstairs" in relation to an FoI request.

The prosecution argued that by June 2021, there was increasing pressure to release the Cabinet Office letter and the names of the people whom it was forwarded on to.

A second recording was played to the court in which McClelland could be heard speaking to another of Donaghy's PAs and asking her to delete the email which had been sent to McKeen.

She responded that she would not do so, to which he replied: 'We never had this conversation".

The court was told that in Donaghy's police interviews she admitted asking her PA to delete the email to Foster.

She said she had acted because Foster was going through a libel action and during this period resigned as first minister and Donaghy was worried about leaks from council and did not want Foster's personal email being revealed.

She said she knew there were hard copies and had only asked for the digital version to be deleted.

However, the prosecution argued that Foster's email address was already in the public domain at this time and that it was not uncommon for council officials to communicate with politicians' via personal email accounts.

A prosecution barrister said while he was making no suggestion that Donaghy was "the DUP's person" or that there was anything wrong with sending the letter to the Cabinet Office "there was a perception in some quarters that this was the case and she was coming under pressure from other parties and the media".

In McClelland's police interview, he said he thought it was legitimate to delete the emails because they needed to prevent leaks before the FoI process was complete and that there were hard copies.

He said he had hard copies in a locked cabinet in his office.

The PA who refused to delete the email to McKeen later gave evidence and was questioned about the council's email retention policy.

A defence barrister asked her if she accepted it was in accordance with council policy to allow an email to be deleted if it had been printed off.

"It reads like it may have been, yes," she replied.

She added: "We had never done this before for any other FoI."

The trial continues.