{"id":211347,"date":"2025-06-24T20:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T20:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/211347\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T20:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T20:59:11","slug":"secretary-of-state-hilary-benn-is-playing-hide-and-seek-on-ni-football-fund-say-nifl-chief-executive-gerard-lawlor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/211347\/","title":{"rendered":"Secretary of State Hilary Benn is &#8216;playing hide and seek\u2019 on NI Football Fund say NIFL Chief Executive Gerard Lawlor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive\u00a0|\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn MP\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0a57efa7-02ac-495d-a7fd-584a7593e7f8.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn MP<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Gerard Lawlor has accused Northern Ireland Secretary of State Hilary Benn of playing \u2018hide and seek\u2019 in relation to holding a meeting about funding for football clubs here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The Northern Ireland Football League (NIFL) Chief Executive claims that Benn agreed to have discussions on the matter back in August 2024 but 10 months on Lawlor says he is still waiting for a get together between the two parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive\u00a0|\u00a0 The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn MP Gerard Lawlor has accused Northern Ireland Secretary&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[6853,1144,8541,30649,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-211347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-hilary-benn","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-sports-direct-premiership","11":"tag-steven-beacom","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114740355212141887","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}