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I finished work last night with a rushed edit of the Assembly debate on the Giants Causeway Visitor Centre so wasn't able to gather my thoughts on the matter for this blog. Now, a day later, the affair is still rumbling along, with Coleraine Council's opposition to the proposed private development. Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds have firmly rejected criticism of their decisions, and the private developer Seymour Sweeney says he has never met either minister, even though he clearly knows the DUP leader Ian Paisley and his son Ian Paisley Junior.

Mr Sweeney says he has never been a DUP donor, although he is a party member. In the rest of the UK this would be a matter of public record as political donations are declared to the Electoral Commission. Here parties will have to declare donations from the autumn of this year. But the Commission will not be allowed to publicise donors' names at least until 2010. This was at the request of some parties who were concerned that identifying their donors might place individuals in danger or discourage potential supporters.

However the fact that ministers from the local parties are now making decisions with major commercial implications puts this continuing lack of transparency in a different context to the days of direct rule when the legislation on party funding was initially drafted. Back In June 2006, at a hearing of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I argued that it would be logical for the timetable for the public disclosure of political donations to be dovetailed with the return of devolution. I think recent events have strengthened that argument.

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