Debate contribution: Budgetary Pressures

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 10 September 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

10 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Budgetary Pressures

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4517479

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thanks, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I apologise for not being in earlier. I had a meeting to attend. The fact that there is a deep crisis in our health and social care system is news to no one.

The chronic underfunding of our schools is not a new problem. This is not the first time that we have discussed the Government's failure to invest in housing, infrastructure or protecting our environment. What is new is that, after some 15 years of implementing austerity on behalf of the British Government, some parties here have suddenly changed tack.

Every bad decision, every cut and every attack on public services by the Tories was, effectively, quietly agreed to by Sinn Féin and the DUP, and by the Alliance Party as well. If members of the public are following the debate today, they might reasonably ask what has caused the change of heart. Was it the people lying in hospital corridors or languishing on a health waiting list? Was it the children whose education is stymied by the under-resourcing of our schools or the special educational needs pupils and their families, referred to earlier, denied a school place in the first instance? Was it the fact that so many poorly paid public-sector workers are struggling to make ends meet? Was it even the many people sleeping rough on our streets or the homeless families whose lives are put on hold and devastated because they do not have a place to call home? People watching may have thought that those things inspired the change of heart, but they would be mistaken. When you look at the motion in the face of all the suffering that we see in our communities — I mentioned some of it — and in our public services, you see that the Alliance Party motion tells us that the place where the cuts are most sharply felt just so happens to be the Department run by their party leader. If they are seriously telling us that the police are suffering the worst of Stormont's cuts, I would respectfully invite them to think and look at that point again. I would invite them to tell that to the workers and the patients in our health service, to those on the housing waiting list, to the parents who cannot afford childcare, to the pupils and teachers who, disgracefully, have to fundraise for classroom supplies and to the pensioners who cannot heat their homes thanks to the Government's cuts. However, we should make absolutely no mistake about it: the parties that bemoan the economic policies of Westminster are preparing for more of the same. The Executive parties that implemented the cruel and punishing policies of the Tories for years are now preparing to roll over for Keir Starmer's right-wing Labour party as they promise more years of hardship. Come next month, when Sinn Féin, the DUP and Alliance sign off lightly on a new austerity Budget and proceed with the cuts as before —

— we will just see how things have changed.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:02 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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