HOUSE Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. of Quezon City (Metro Manila) on Friday kept silent about the release of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, or “pork barrel,” of Rep. Ignacio

“Iggy” Arroyo of Negros Occidental province, even after assuring the late lawmaker’s constituents that the chamber would look after their needs.

“Following our custom, the House will ensure that the needs of Rep. Arroyo’s constituency will be addressed despite his passing,” Belmonte said in a statement.

“During his tenure in Congress, Rep. Arroyo advocated the empowerment of the youth, the welfare of children, and for environmental protection and preservation,” he added.

“In the meantime, we offer our deepest condolences and prayers to the family of Rep. Arroyo in this time of grief,” the Speaker said.

When asked if this would mean that the late legislator’s “pork barrel” would be released, Belmonte answered that there is no decision yet on the matter.

He gave the same reply after he was asked who would be named caretaker of the Fifth District of Negros Occidental—the district Rep. Arroyo represented.

According to Bong Ruado, the departed lawmaker’s chief of staff, Rep. Arroyo’s immediate family has sent eldest daughter Bianca to London to oversee the repatriation of her father’s body.

Rep. Arroyo—who was serving his third House term when he died on Thursday in the British capital—first revealed his liver problems in a statement released in August 2010, when he claimed that he was the one who leased one of the five second-hand helicopters that were allegedly sold overpriced to the Philippine National Police in February 2009.

Prior to the statement’s release, the ownership of those choppers was tagged on his older brother Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, husband of then-President Gloria Arroyo.

In that statement, Rep. Arroyo argued that the contract of lease for the five helicopters, executed on March 16, 2004, would prove that he, not his brother, was the one who sold the helicopters as brand new to the national police.

The late lawmaker was first elected to the House in 2004.

During his second term in 2007, he served as member of the House committees on agriculture and appropriations.

At the time of his death on Thursday, he was a member of the House committees on agrarian reform, appropriations, basic education and foreign affairs, among others.