“Proposed financial package woefully inadequate”- Conor Murphy, new NI Finance Minister.
A deal has been done to get the NI Assembly back up and running after the collapse a 1000+ days ago. But all is not well in the big house on the hill. Parties are becoming increasingly agitated at the UK’s attitude to the need for sufficient funds to kickstart the devolved process once more. There could be a deficit of a possible £1 billion… a significant hole in the NI finances for the forthcoming year.
After the British Government published its proposed financial package, Finance Minister, Conor Murphy responded by saying: “The parties restored the Executive in Down news, news online, South Down, County Down, downnews, down news newspaper, internet news, news in County Down, South Down news,xa0
“The financial package claims to provide £2bn.
“£1bn of this was already coming to the Executive.
“A further £240m was already promised as part of the Confidence and Supply agreement.
“The bottom line is with this proposed package, our public services face a shortfall of at least £1 billion next year alone.
“This will make it extremely difficult to fund public services.” This includes health, education, community and other key areas.
Mr Murphy added:xa0“For the legacy institutions, the proposed package adds £100m to the £150m previously committed. This falls at least £50m short of the projected cost of £300-£400m
“The parties are working together to deliver quality public services for our people. This act of bad faith makes our job much more difficult.
“As Finance Minister, I cannot and will not accept this and will be taking this up with the British Government.”
