Debate contribution: Budget Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 20 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

20 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget Bill: Final Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4381218

Read the official Assembly record

Text

You asked for it, but you clearly did not get it. That is all that I am saying to the Member. Through the Chair, all that I am saying is that you might have asked for it, but it was not achieved. It was not delivered, and it was not written down in black and white. The Member can carp at me all he likes about what his party did or did not ask for, but the simple truth is that it was not nailed down in black and white. That should not, by the way, have been a deal-breaker. We should never have been out of the Assembly in the first place. There was no justification for bringing down governance here, and, from our perspective, there never will be — ever. However, that does not mean that, when parties are involved in discussions and a financial package is on the table, they should not say to the UK officials and Ministers who are in the room in Hillsborough, "Put it on the table. Publish it". People were walking out of Hillsborough Castle and briefing the media with a piece of paper in their hands about what was being offered. There was no reason for that information not to be in the public domain so that there would at least be a bit of clarity. I actually commend the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, who, in fairness, was pretty consistent about saying that those details should have been put in the public domain. We have dealt with that over the last couple of weeks, however, and it need not get in the way of where we go. As I said, we need the Finance Minister to be able to engage with the Treasury on the fiscal framework. We in the Finance Committee will do our job to scrutinise that. I am sure that Mr Tennyson, a colleague on the Finance Committee, will join me in supporting a costed, timelined and targeted plan for public service recovery, and I am sure that his colleagues in the Executive will also do that. I have a couple of slightly more techie academic points about how we do fiscal policy here. We tabled what, I admit, was a relatively tangential amendment to the Budget Bill that would give the Fiscal Council more power in law to report on public service improvement. This may not have been the moment to debate that and get it into law, but we think that it is time for us to debate that. As Chair of the Finance Committee, I intend for the Committee to have those discussions, and I also —.

I will give way briefly.

I agree with the Member. It would be helpful to have the Minister's view on when the Fiscal Council will be put into law and whether she will commit to supporting the Fiscal Council having a remit not just to report on public finances but to report on a statutory basis on delivery against key targets in the Programme for Government. The process has been deeply suboptimal. As the Opposition, we will record the fact that we do not support all of the Bill, but we will not stand in its way. We will not be destructive; we will be constructive. I recognise that there are particular challenges for the officials in moving the process forward at pace. This has been said so many times — I have said it many times, and I have been an MLA for only four years — but we cannot do this again. We really cannot. That is why we also need to focus on Assembly reform to ensure that we do not collapse again. I reiterate my point that, once we have delivered the Budget Bill, which, I am sure, will pass, we need to have a costed and timelined plan for public service recovery. I urge the Minister to give us some reassurance about when we will, hopefully, see a multi-year Budget rather than a single-year one and whether that will be before or after the end of the financial year and to give us her view on the role of the Fiscal Council. With that, Mr Speaker, I conclude my remarks. I am sure that is some relief.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:42 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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