NI civil servants criticised in report

Northern Ireland civil servants were lambasted today over major fraud by employees in the province’s government-funded small business agency and a failure to recover the money.

The Stormont Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment and the Local Enterprise Development Unit were condemned in a report by the Public Accounts Committee of the power-sharing Assembly over the fraud by two members of staff at the agency involving £220,000 (€343,689) of public funds.