Failure to agree Stormont budget would be catastrophic, Naomi Long warns

The consequences for Stormont departments if the Executive cannot agree a budget will be “catastrophic”, Naomi Long has warned.

The Alliance Party leader and Justice Minister also insisted that she cannot make any further cuts to her department without doing “structural damage” to the justice system in Northern Ireland.

Finance Minister John O’Dowd published draft proposals in January for a multi-year budget, but they have not yet been agreed by the powersharing Executive.

In February the UK Government announced it would make £400 million available from reserves to the Executive to deal with overspends.

The money has to be repaid over the next three years and the Treasury said it would be conducting an “open book exercise” looking at the Executive budget.

Ms Long said agreeing the budget was the “biggest challenge” facing the Executive.

She said: “It’s the one thing that the Executive must do. We can’t avoid it, we can’t duck it, we have to get a budget in place.

“We have an opportunity to have a three-year budget, and that three-year budget would be beneficial, we would be able to plot out over the next three years what is possible.

“It would also, I think, be really helpful to people in the community and voluntary sector to know what their likely funding will be for the next three years, and to be able to plan on that basis, rather than this annual race for funding.”

She added: “If we can’t agree a budget then the consequences for all departments will be catastrophic.”

The Justice Minister said Stormont departments had to prove that they can be responsible with their funding allocations.

She said: “Unless Treasury can see clearly that we’re spending the money in the right places and on the right things, we’re not going to be able to make a compelling argument for more.

“We do have a strong case to make, but I think we undermine ourselves quite often, because the things that we spend money on are often not the real essentials.”

Ms Long said the amount of funding given to justice had fallen in recent years from 11% of the block grant to 8%.

She added: “We are caught in a very difficult situation, we have already had to trim the fat away from DOJ.

“We have had a significant reduction, for example, in the number of staff in DOJ, the number of staff in our arms length bodies.

“That’s not true in other departments. We’ve had to put downward pressure all the time on what we’re doing and what I’m saying is it’s not fair to come to me after 10 years of doing that, and say, find more, there is no more to give.

“There are other people who have not started that journey yet and they are the departments I think that really now need to focus on how do they right-size, because I would argue now that justice actually is too lean, that we don’t have the resources that are necessary to provide the basic services that we have to provide.

“I can’t find additional savings without doing structural damage to the justice system and to confidence in justice, and that’s a life or death issue.”

She said: “We hear this about health, it’s a life or death issue. So is justice, and so it’s really important that we are properly funded.

“If you take health and education, 71% of the block grant goes on health and education, 8% on justice.

“There has got to be something there that needs to be dealt with in terms of where we prioritise resources so that people can feel safe in their community, because people’s safety, people’s well being, is connected to them feeling safe and secure in their community.”