Wrightbus: Firm faces questions over Green Pastures donations

Wrightbus is facing questions over £15m in donations to a religious charity.

A large number of the company's employees have been made redundant after it was placed into administration.

The Green Pastures charity, which is led by Wrightbus's majority shareholder Jeff Wright, received the money over six years.

The donations helped it to develop plans for a huge church and village complex known as Project Gateway.

Speaking on BBC News NI's Good Morning Ulster programme, Sinn Féin MLA Conor Murphy said that questions have been raised about the donations.

"I note there are questions that have been raised about the finances of the firm and where they were spent and I think all these things need to come out in the wash," he said.

But DUP MP Ian Paisley said that how directors spend their dividends is a private issue.

"It's up for directors to explain how they spend their dividend," he said.

"Ultimately for the directors, they will have to consider why and how they did those things but no doubt all of those things will be considered."

Alastair Hamilton, chief executive of the government-backed job creation agency Invest NI, would not comment on the funds that the company drew out.

In 2013, Invest NI gave £3.9m in backing for Wrightbus's major £15m research and development project into low-carbon vehicles.

"On every company whenever we put grant assistance in, we put restrictions on the volume or value of drawings that can be made out of that company," he said.

"Clearly, we can't say to a company that we can't give you grant assistance you can take nothing out by way of dividend.

He said that the rules Invest NI put in place in its letter of offer for investment were followed.

The top company in the Wright business, the Cornerstone Group, showed the firm made a loss of £1.7m in 2017.

That compared to a pre-tax profit of almost £11m in 2016.

In 2017, the Cornerstone Group gave £4.15m in charitable donations, according to latest accounts.

However at the time it made earlier donations, the company was making substantial profits.

The donations were always reported in the group's audited accounts.

BBC News NI economics editor John Campbell said that "if a firm has distributable profits it can pay out, shareholders can spend that money on whatever they like".

He added that "in retrospect it looks like a bad decision" given the cash flow needed to run a big manufacturing firm, but that any analysis of why the company has struggled cannot ignore "the lamentable state of the UK bus market".

He said that an administrator has a statutory duty to report on the events leading up to administration and the conduct of directors.

"If they find evidence of breaches of the Companies Act they report that to the Department of the Economy."

A major redevelopment project centred around Green Pastures was approved by councillors in 2015.

The plan was to build an urban village on the edge of Ballymena, with housing, business parks, a hotel and community facilities.

Green Pastures said the development would create 100 apprenticeships, 80 safe houses for vulnerable adults and 104 care places for children with special needs.

However, work at the Project Gateway site appeared to have stalled in recent months.