Executive gets £50m boost but greater efficiencies demanded

STORMONT REACTION:THE STORMONT Executive is to benefit from the British budget by around £50 million in the short term, the Northern Ireland Office said. But demands for ever greater efficiency savings will mean additional pressures for the powersharing Executive.

Savings of £122 million will be needed by 2011 but these will be offset by an extra £116 million allocation for short-term projects plus an additional £28 million for policing costs in the face of the dissident republican threat and £27.8 million for “ring-fenced” social security requirements.

The budget coincided with the announcement that the North’s jobless total jumped 1,900 to 43,900 or 5.7 per cent.

Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward said: “In a time of serious economic difficulty this is a big success for Northern Ireland – for the Northern Ireland Executive, for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and most importantly for the people of Northern Ireland.”

The Northern Ireland Office said it did not accept that requirements for efficiencies were the same as cuts. Every target laid down for the Stormont Executive was realisable without cutting services, a spokesman said.

Finance Minister Nigel Dodds said he was disappointed by the requirement for savings. However, he said he shared in the sense of relief at Stormont that the feared huge-scale cuts in public spending did not materialise.

The Ulster Unionists, Alliance and the SDLP said the budget underlined their case for the Executive’s three-year budget and Programme for Government needed to be revised urgently.

There was a general fear that Northern Ireland’s dependence on public spending means the region could bear a disproportionate burden in coming years.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan said: “In February of this year we put a motion before the Assembly calling on the Executive to revise the priorities set out in the budget in light of the current economic crisis and to direct further expenditure into social housing, retraining and upskilling. The chancellor said that in response to the worldwide financial crisis decisive actions have been taken by international governments. A ‘no we can’t’ approach from our government is no longer sustainable.”

Ulster Unionist deputy leader Danny Kennedy said: “The DUP must surely now get its head out of the sand; they have told the people of Northern Ireland all was fine with the public finances. Today has exposed that line as utterly false.”

Alliance said the Executive’s response to the current downturn “is no longer fit for purpose”.