Debate contribution: Public Finances

Debate contribution by Ms Diane Forsythe on 6 February 2024.

MLA

Ms Diane Forsythe

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

6 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Public Finances

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4255991

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to support the motion and make my maiden speech. I consider it a great honour and privilege to represent South Down in this place. I am a proud Mourne woman from a small village, Ballymartin, at the foot of Slieve Binnian. I love where I live: the beautiful countryside, the culture and the diversity of industry, through farming, fishing and manufacturing and much more. However, especially, I love the people at the heart of our rural communities. South Down is large geographically but it is made up of many individual core rural towns and communities: Kilkeel, Annalong and Newcastle, and over the mountains to Rathfriland and Katesbridge. We have Warrenpoint, Clough, Dundrum, Crossgar, Downpatrick and many more. I represent all those rural communities, which have been disproportionately disadvantaged by the chronic underfunding that Northern Ireland has experienced over many years. Access to emergency healthcare in the countryside is a huge challenge. The poor transport infrastructure cuts us off so easily in times like the recent flooding. Rural transport, access to nearby preschool places and childcare facilities all face significant barriers.

All of that is a consequence of the long-term injustice in the funding of public services in Northern Ireland. For decades, our public funding was spent on rebuilding and patching up our roads, hospitals and town centres after the devastation of bombings. Unlike other jurisdictions at that time, we were not investing our money in enhancing our infrastructure, railway networks or on making our hospitals world-class, and we have, inevitably, fallen behind in our services. On top of that pressure, our funding model has not been sufficient. I support all that my colleague Phillip Brett said, and I thank our DUP deputy leader, Gavin Robinson MP, and our DUP peers in the House of Lords, particularly Lord Morrow, for securing debates on the matter. The consequences of funding being below need are so damaging and dislocating that, when parts of the United Kingdom get so close to need, it is vital that the UK Government treat them and are seen to treat them in exactly the same way, affording them equality of protection. I make no apology for arguing strongly that Northern Ireland should benefit from exactly the same protections as Wales has enjoyed since 2012 and especially since 2018-19. Northern Ireland's funding should never have been allowed to fall below need. The UK Government cannot adopt a UK needs formula and agree to intervene to protect one part of the UK to ensure that its funding does not fall below need while not doing so for another part of the UK, which has allowed the funding not only to fall to need but to plunge well below it. That is what has happened. Not only that, but the Government have had the audacity to compound our underfunding by making us pay back an overspend last year. That overspend would never have happened, had they funded us to need in the first place, let alone funded us to need plus an uplift. It is not acceptable to say that protecting funding to need in one part of the country must be done by means of an uplift and a fiscal floor, while another part of the country will have to make do with a fiscal ceiling to the level of need and a recurring £600 million deficit in the baseline arising from our underfunding. Northern Ireland cannot afford to settle for a fiscal ceiling or a fiscal floor. Our block grant budget needs to be afforded the same protection as that in Wales: a fiscal floor to need and an uplift. That is the only fair way forward. I support the motion. I support sustainable finances with multi-year budgets. We need them to be able to deliver public services for Northern Ireland; to deliver on key objectives, such as childcare, to ensure that no mother or father in Northern Ireland has to choose between caring for their children or going to work; to ensure that our rural communities are delivered the critical infrastructure that they need to thrive; and to deliver a better future for Northern Ireland.

691 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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