Financial offer to break Stormont budget impasse ‘falls well short’
A financial offer made to Stormont ministers to assist in agreeing a budget “falls well short” of dealing with pressures in a single department, DUP leader Gavin Robinson has said.
Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant is meeting Stormont parties on Monday in a bid to break the long-running budget impasse.
The Press Association understands the Government’s financial proposal to the Executive is in the region of an additional £350 million a year over three years.
First Minister Michelle O’Neill said an agreement could only be made when it is the “right budget” and said she would “hardball” Sir Chris over a fair funding settlement.
MLAs have returned to Stormont following the summer recess.
The Northern Ireland Secretary met powersharing ministers at Stormont Castle on Monday morning before meeting party leaders at Parliament Buildings and will later hold bilateral meetings with the five largest Stormont parties.
As well as discussing financial pressures, the talks will focus on reform of Stormont institutions.
Stormont ministers have insisted they cannot strike a budget without additional financial support from Westminster.
Stormont departments are currently allowed to spend up to 95% of last year’s funding in the absence of ministers agreeing the budget.
After meeting Sir Chris, Ms O’Neill said she pressed the point that the current funding model is wrong.
She said: “We’ve just come from a meeting with the Secretary of State, we’re very much focused on getting a budget, but it needs to be the right budget.
“It needs to be a budget that reflects the needs of people here.
“We’ve long made the case, and can stand over the case, that we have been underfunded – our public services, our health system, our education system, our wastewater infrastructure, our roads, all the things that people deserve.
“The fault line here has always been that we’ve been underfunded.
“We continue in those discussions and they’ll carry on throughout today, and in days ahead.
“But our approach to this discussion is around a fair funding model, proper funding for our public services.”
She said: “I am going to hardball the Secretary of State, we are going to hardball the Secretary of State on a fair funding model.”
Mr Robinson said he understood that additional resource had been offered to Stormont ministers.
But he said: “It falls well short of even some of the pressures in one department, let alone across the Northern Ireland Executive.
“And anybody who stands before you today and says look, we just need to get on and agree and accept something which will not get the job done, can explain to you the cuts that will come as a consequence, the redundancies that will come as a consequence, the consequence of unfunded transformation.”
Mr Robinson added: “We’re clearly at a stage now where the Assembly is coming back with a bit of vim after the summer, but we all know that the election has arrived, and there is an important point to try and get the budget agreed for this year, and I think remove the budget as a political issue from the election.”
Asked how close the Government offer is to what is required, the DUP leader said: “From what I understand, they’re not in the right place at this stage.”
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said parties “were a long way from the completion” of the discussions.
She said: “We are at the starting point, I think it has been a positive starting point and we need to build on that.
“We need to get our heads together. There are things the Executive can do to help itself in terms of making changes, doing modernisation, all of the things that we can demonstrated, by getting to completion, our seriousness about our finances.
“That, I think, would help our argument with Treasury hugely.”
Ulster Unionist leader Jon Burrows said the meetings were the “opening conversations” around finding a solution to the budget issue.
He said: “We are very clear we do need support in getting a financial settlement that allows us to have a budget to deliver public services and to make the pay awards to our public sector servants.
“But we are a strong voice for more responsibility in the Executive, that more money needs to come with doing things differently.”
SDLP leader Claire Hanna said funding for Northern Ireland’s public services “shouldn’t be a negotiating tactic for the executive parties, nor should it be for the UK Government”.
Asked if budget talks should be linked to reform of Stormont, Ms Hanna said: “We made clear to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State last week that the opportunity of having the parties around the table should not be missed, that the two issues are linked.
“But given the propensity of parties to delay and to throw up chaff and to elongate negotiations, that would leave public services and all of us as people who rely on them in an even more perilous situation, so they should be done in tandem, but we don’t agree with making any condition.”
TUV leader Jim Allister said the lack of a budget is “a classic demonstration of the dysfunctionalism of this place”.
“Very often, it’s not that Stormont doesn’t have enough money, it’s very often because it squanders it in a spendthrift way.
“Indeed, there’s one party in this Executive, Sinn Féin who, for ideological reasons, could never have enough money because if you had then you couldn’t blame the Brits so, of necessity, they must always have the begging bowl out.
“And, sadly, (they are) often encouraged and assisted by unionists who should have more wit when it comes to the undermining that involves of our position in the United Kingdom.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said proposals to reform Stormont “need to be grasped”.
Speaking to reporters in Co Offaly at Fianna Fáil’s annual think-in following a session on the Shared Island Initiative, Mr Martin said: ““I think that’s extremely important because it would give greater consistency to the operation of the Executive and would enable people to make politics work, and so these are important, in our view, initiatives in the here and now that need to be grasped.”