A Stormont minister says he has received assurances that “established processes” were followed in the appointment of a former Alliance Party deputy leader to a new policy unit at Ulster University.

Economy Minister Conor Murphy faced questions in Parliament about whether there was a conflict of interest in the appointment of Stephen Farry, who previously served as Stormont’s Minister for Employment and Learning.

Last month Dr. Farry is joined by another senior Alliance figure, Dr. It was announced that he will jointly lead the university’s Strategic Policy Unit alongside Jodie Carson.

Dr Farry resigned as Alliance deputy leader after failing to retain his seat in the North Down parliament in the general election.

Until recently, Dr Carson worked as a special adviser to Alliance minister Andrew Muir at the Department for Environment, Agriculture and Rural Affairs (DEARA).

The university said it appointed them through an “exceptional talent pool” process.

However, the University and College Union (UCU) later raised concerns that the appointments were made outside normal recruitment processes.

The university said there was a “compelling justification” for why the publicly announced hiring in this case was “not appropriate.”

During ministerial questioning on Tuesday, TÜV MLA Timothy Gaston asked Mr Murphy for his assessment of whether there was a conflict of interest for a university to “hire a former minister with policy authority for higher education without a public recruitment process”.

Mr Murphy told MLAs that universities were responsible for their own recruitment.

He added: “Regarding the recent appointment of co-directors to lead the University of Ulster’s new Strategic Policy Unit, I have received assurances from the vice-chancellor (Professor Paul Bartholomew) that an established process has been followed and appropriately implemented.”

Mr Gaston said: “The public believes that the promotion of a former minister with no significant academic research through exceptional talent that ignores the regular appointment process is extremely dubious at best.

“What will the Minister do to ensure this doesn’t happen again? “There is an obvious conflict of interest in this case.”

Mr Murphy said he had received assurances that recruitment was being carried out in accordance with the university’s processes and that he had “no other role to play”.

DUP MLA Peter Martin said the established process Mr Murphy was referring to was that the exceptional talent pool process should only be used in “a very small number of cases where the potential exists to recruit a truly world-class academic”.

He added: “May I ask the Minister what assurances he was given by Vice-Chancellor Paul Bartholomew that both the former Alliance Party deputy leader and the former special adviser to the Alliance DEARA minister are genuinely world-class academics?”

Mr Murphy said: “This is a decision for the university itself to make.

“Given that there is a public element to this appointment process, what we wanted was that the processes they had for this particular recruitment were followed in accordance with their own procedures, and that was the assurance we were given.

“We did not ask any questions about the candidates’ status.”