Robinson unveils £10 billion budget for North

The £10 billion (€13.4 billion) budget that the North's Minister for Finance Peter Robinson unveiled in the Northern Assembly yesterday was generally welcomed, with the main dissenting voice emanating from the Alliance Party.

Mr Robinson set out rolling budgets for the next three years which, he said, would save each Northern householder £1,000 on average between now and 2011.

In his budget statement, Mr Robinson referred to the fact that the Irish Government was providing €60 million to support collaborative North-South innovation projects.

During the budget consultation period, a number of Ministers in the four-party Northern Executive complained of serious underfunding in their departmental allocations in Mr Robinson's earlier draft budget.

The UUP Minister for Health Michael McGimpsey and the SDLP Minister for Social Development Margaret Ritchie were particularly critical that their departments were suffering because of poor funding.

But in his final budget, Mr Robinson found additional finance for these departments, which ensured that the Executive of DUP, Sinn Féin, SDLP and UUP Ministers was able to agree unanimously to yesterday's budget.

The main disagreement came from Alliance Assembly member Stephen Farry, who complained that the budget did not do enough help create a "shared future for Northern Ireland".

Mr Robinson, in the first budget under the powersharing Executive formed last May, elaborated on how the average Northern householder would save £1,000 over the coming three years.

Under direct rule, as former Northern Secretary Peter Hain had made clear, domestic rates were to increase annually, while water charges were also to be introduced.

In Mr Robinson's budget, domestic rates will be frozen in cash terms for the next three years, while domestic regional rates will only increase in relation to inflation. There will be a cap on industrial rates and, for the first year at least, water rates have been postponed. All this would benefit householders to the tune of £1,000 over three years, he said.

The Minister said an additional £10 million was being allocated each year until 2011 to the Department of Health, with the department also having first call on the first £20 million of underspending by other departments each year.

Over the next five years, it is planned to build 10,000 social and affordable housing units in Northern Ireland. Ms Ritchie's department, in addition to £70 million already secured, will receive another £205 million to build 5,250 of these houses.

Mr McGimpsey said yesterday that the additional health funding would "save lives".