Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2024-25

Debate contribution by Mr Colin McGrath on 17 February 2025.

MLA

Mr Colin McGrath

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

17 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2024-25

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4803041

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I wish the Minister well in his new role in the Department of Finance and with the challenges that he will undoubtedly have in the time ahead. Finances have long been the subject of scrutiny for those who debate the ability or the long-term viability of this place and how we spend our money. If we want this place to be effective and to make a tangible and positive impact on people's lives, it must do so with responsibility and accountability at its core. We can do that not just with simple Budget management but with a Budget that is underpinned by a strategic and forward-looking Programme for Government. Regrettably, we are once again in the position where, while the votes on Finance are progressing, the Executive have yet to publish an agreed Programme for Government. That only leads to confusion over what the Executive's financial priorities are and how they align with the Programme for Government. Only the Executive can answer that. I mention that only because it has a bearing on the perception of how we handle money. Are the Executive making allocations based on priority or strategic vision, or is it simply the news headline of the day? As for the first Supply resolution for the year ending, there has been a record number of in-year reallocations, with little sign of prioritisation or multi-year spending. I fear that lessons from that have not been learned, and that is not a good indication for the upcoming year. As the SDLP Opposition health spokesperson, I will focus a little on the health side of the House. When we consider the year that has just passed, we see that the Health budget at the beginning of the year was deficient. Although it has never been higher in terms of the amount that was given to the Department, it simply was not enough to allow the Department to do the work that it had to do to simply stand still. Through the in-year monitoring, the finance was found to make an allocation for pay increases, and there was some for waiting lists and other pressures, but the Minister still needed more money to simply do the work that had been done before. The trusts were expected to make hundreds of millions of pounds of savings, and you can call them "efficiencies", "cuts" or whatever the Minister likes, but a cut is a cut whatever way you slice it. Did we hear our health trusts crying that it was unreasonable in the media? No. They got on with the job, regardless of how difficult and upsetting it must have been. At the Health Committee, the Health Minister gave a health warning that, for the year ahead, things will look even worse. The Department faces a huge gap of £400 million, and the trusts have been asked again to find new savings of £200 million.

Yes. Of course.

Absolutely. I could not agree more. If there is one thing that the Executive absolutely can plan for, it is the fact that they will not have a coherent plan to deal with all the issues that need to be addressed. Of course, they are an Executive who do not want to take any difficult decisions. They simply want to trundle through and see whether they can avoid upsetting anybody by making a decision that will strategically enable services to be better delivered, for example, in Health. I cannot countenance how those trusts will find another £200 million of cuts in the year ahead. It is an unenviable position, but it is the position that the Executive have put our trusts in. The Department of Health is, as other speakers have referenced, missing most of its targets in addressing the health needs of our population. Our Budgets and Supplementary Estimates are not helping to address that gap. Where else in the world would you have a Department of Health that comes with a health warning? The unassailable fact is that the Executive expect our public services to, once again, do more with less and with no vision of when things will get better. That is not normal government. If we want to see improvements in our broken health system, if we want to avoid pay disputes and strike action, if we want to avoid devastating and cruel cuts to the service, we need the Executive to work smarter. If we want to see transformation across our health service and other public services, we need to see the Executive work smarter. Again I remind anybody who has not heard about it that the transformation of health services does not have to mean the centralisation of health services. Transformation means simply working smarter. It is time to knuckle down. It is time to do the hard work of government, address the financial needs of our public sector and deliver transformation, including a three-year finance cycle to improve the lives of people here.

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

Assessment

Not qualifying

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:01 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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