Debate contribution: Education: Budget 2026-29/2030
Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on .
- MLA
- Mr Paul Givan
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 14 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Education: Budget 2026-29/2030
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5685659
Read the official Assembly record
Text
As the Minister of Finance, John O'Dowd, announced in his oral statement of 3 March 2026, the Executive will receive an additional £380 million of resource departmental expenditure limit funding over the next three years, following announcements that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer made in her spring statement. In his statement, Mr O'Dowd clarified that £361·2 million of that funding related to the UK Government's decision to provide a £5 billion package to help address the debts that local councils in England had built up in recent years through providing special educational needs support. Although the Executive have yet to agree a Budget for this financial year and beyond, following the announcement of that additional funding, the Finance Minister revised his proposed Budget allocations to provide only an additional £115·8 million, or just 32%, of the £361·2 million of additional funding to my Department. I fully appreciate that Barnett consequentials are typically unhypothecated, but SEN provision in Northern Ireland has suffered similarly to elsewhere in the United Kingdom from historical underfunding, which is why the Barnett consequential was made to the Northern Ireland Executive in the first place. Given that SEN provision is a Programme for Government priority, and that, in an Assembly debate, every political party voiced significant support for the children and young people who require SEN support, I find it remarkable that the Finance Minister proposes to take the vast majority of that funding away from the very children whom it is supposed to support.
249 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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