Billions of pounds are needed over the next 10 years to tackle Northern Ireland's chronic infrastructural problems.
The Northern Executive in its Programme for Governmentplan has identified spending on the North's crumbling hospitals, schools, roads and public transport and water and sewerage systems as major priorities.
It is believed that the British Chancellor of Exchequer's financial package due to be announced later this week will focus on three Executive departments - Health, Education and Regional Development.
The North’s health service has been identified as the number one priority in the power-sharing administration. With hospital waiting lists the longest in Europe and a proposed new regional cancer centre still on the drawing board, the NHS desperately needs an injection of funds.
More funds are need to tackle the North’s deteriorating schools. Last month Education Minister Martin McGuinness unveiled a package of £107 million sterling to provide essential maintenance work on 22 schools.
But he said a further £500 million sterling was needed to deal with the backlog in the schools' capital funding programme.
The annual budget for Minister Mr Peter Robinson is currently £538.3 million sterling per year, which does not stretch to the estimated £3 billion sterling needed over the next 20 years to modernise the water and sewerage system.
It has planned to spend £2 billion sterling over the next ten years to meet the needs of roads and public transport. But officials have estimated that an extra £1 billion would be needed on top of that to significantly improve the transportation network.