The recent appointment of two senior members of the Alliance Party, Stephen Farry and Jodie Carson — who was formerly the special adviser to the AERA Minister — as Ulster University professors, to a newly created strategic policy unit, with salaries of circa £80,000 a year, has caused significant concern. Those posts were not advertised but, instead, were drawn from the university's exceptional talent pool (ETP). You may not have heard of the exceptional talent pool before. I had not and, in fact, before last week, neither had the Equality Commission.

I found a document that outlined the ETP. It states:

"It is intended that only truly ‘world-class’ academics will satisfy the criteria for the exceptional talent pool."

I will leave it to Members to decide whether they deem Dr Farry or Dr Carson to be "world-class" in the field of academia.

There are legitimate questions for a number of parties to answer, the first of which is for the Alliance Party. When did the conversations between those two senior Alliance Party members and Ulster University start, given the fact that, five months ago, one appointee was an Alliance MP and, one month ago, the other was the Alliance special adviser to the AERA Minister? Were any Alliance Party members involved in Ulster University's selection process? There are questions, too, for the university's vice-chancellor (VC), Paul Bartholomew, who, ultimately, signed off on those appointments. I asked for a meeting with the VC, but he declined. I thought that that was strange, given the fact that one of Ulster University's value statements is:

"We are open, honest and transparent with each other."

Personally, I think that you would need either an excavator or dynamite to find any transparency in this process.

Some of the questions that I would like to ask the VC are as follows. When were Dr Farry and Dr Carson added to the exceptional talent pool? Did anyone involved in the recruitment process declare a conflict of interest? What was the compelling case that no one else in Northern Ireland or the UK could fulfil those two roles? Who was involved in the final decision to employ those individuals? Given the fact that the VC's commitment to transparency does not seem to include meeting public representatives, I hope that he has a good FOI team, because I intend to keep it extraordinarily busy.

I encourage anyone in Northern Ireland or in the British Isles who feels that they would have liked to apply for those two positions but could not to contact the Equality Commission as soon as possible in order to lodge a complaint. I would certainly be more than willing to help them in that process. The lawfulness of the approach should concern everyone in the Chamber, because it runs a cart and horses through the merit principle.