The SDLP was not given a seat on the committee despite councillors being told by their own Chief Executive they should do so - a decision the Equality Commission says should now be reversed.

The issue arose in November last year when the council was electing its representatives to the Transition Committee which is overseeing the merger of Lisburn and Castlereagh into one of the so called 11 super councils in 2011.

Despite getting a recommendation from the Chief Executive that the council should use its existing system to select the members, they opted instead to use the d'Hondt mechanism - which excluded the SDLP.

Welcoming the Equality Commission's findings the SDLP council leader Cllr Peter O'Hagan said the Council's own equality scheme required the council to be inclusive and "use an informal approach to ensure that the SDLP was part of the committee".

"Instead the council majority decided to ignore the advice of its own chief executive and use the d'Hondt mechanism. The only difference was to exclude the SDLP" he said. "The decision was screened for equality and the breach was pointed out, but the majority confirmed its decision.

"There is only one name for changing the voting system to exclude particular elected representatives, and it is gerrymander."

Mr O'Hagan said he believed Lisburn had set "a very bad example" and the Chief Executive of the Council now has to "get his political poop scoop out to clear this mess, but the stench will remain for a very long time."

The Equality Commission has now recommended the Council should "immediately re-constitute the membership of its representatives on the current Castlereagh/Lisburn Transition Committee", which will allow the SDLP to be represented.

However, the chairman of the Transition Committee DUP Councillor Jonathan Craig described the commission's ruling as 'absurd'.

"We used what is recognised worldwide as an equality friendly system to reflect members of the Transition Committee" Mr Craig said.
"If Peter O'Hagan wants the procedure followed I have no difficulty, but quite honestly the UUP and DUP will reselect their existing candidates and unfortunately the rest will be left arguing who else goes on it.

"As far as I am concerned this is something these parties need to agree amongst themselves and I will take no part in it. We have used a world recognised equality driven process which has given fairness to all. Mr O'Hagan doesn't want to recognise that the electorate didn't vote for them in significant numbers. That is reality."

The matter is to be discussed at the next meeting of the council's Strategic Policy committee next week.