Clarke banned for three years

Clarke banned for three years

19 October 2016

INDEPENDENT councillor Patrick Clarke has been banned from politics for three years after being declared “unfit for public office.”

The 42 year-old is the first politician in Northern Ireland to be sanctioned for breaching a local government code of conduct.

The three year disqualification, which was imposed on Mr Clarke this afternoon at Newry, Mourne and Down headquarters in Downpatrick, means he will not be able to stand in the next council elections in 2019.

It follows the first local government ethics standards adjudicative hearing of its kind in Northern Ireland three weeks ago at which Clarke admitted bringing the council into disrepute.

The Slieve Croob councillor was reported to the hearing by a former Alliance Party colleague, concerned that he had breached a newly published Code of Conduct through a number of criminal convictions acquired in recent years.

Mr Clarke first broke the law in 2010 when he siphoned almost £2,000 form Drumaroad Community Association, of which he was chair. Four years later, he defrauded Dundrum Community Association of £750 while an office bearer for the group.

He also pleaded guilty in court in March this year to sexually assaulting a woman at a Christmas party in 2014, and to possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage in an incident near his Mill Hill Court Road in Castlewellan on September 5, last year.

Mr Clarke, who was elected to the council as an Alliance Party member before becoming Independent, was disqualified despite his absence from today’s hearing and following an insistence earlier this week that he would not willingly resign from his post.

Acting Local Government Commissioner Ian Gordon explained that a partial suspension was not considered appropriate because of the nature of Mr Clarke’s conduct over a prolonged period of time and for his apparent lack of insight into the consequences of his behaviour.

He said it was important to maintain confidence in local government.

“The allegations against councillor Clarke are serious. There has been a repeated failure to conform to the code,” he said.

“The serious nature of the misconduct and lack of reflection is such as to render him unfit for public office.”