Debate contribution: Budget 2025-26: Reports

Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on 8 April 2025.

MLA

Mr Eóin Tennyson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

8 April 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Budget 2025-26: Reports

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4919913

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to participate in an important debate on the 2025-26 Budget and the reports from the Committee for Finance and the Fiscal Council relating to that Budget. As I prepared for the debate, I revisited discussions that we had on the 2024-25 Budget a year ago. Back then, largely due to the stop-go nature of the Assembly, we were considering a Budget in the absence of any Programme for Government or public consultation. At the outset, therefore, it is important that we acknowledge the significant progress that has been made since. We come to the debate in the knowledge that the views of citizens, stakeholders and organisations have been considered and that the Executive's allocations reflect their priorities and commitments in the Programme for Government. We know that, as has been referenced, too many of our constituents languish on hospital waiting lists, so it is right that £215 million has been ring-fenced to tackle waiting lists and invest in elective care. Overall, the Department of Health's budget has been uplifted by over £600 million from its opening position in 2024-25, which complements the £60 million that has already been invested for GPs and primary care in public service transformation. Considerable steps have been made, such as the more than doubling of the earmarked funding for early years and childcare to £55 million, with an additional £15 million being allocated to special educational needs (SEN). It is welcome too that additional funding has been secured for safer communities, although it is imperative that the business case that is with the Department of Finance, as presented by the Chief Constable and the Minister of Justice, is progressed as swiftly as possible to support stabilisation of the PSNI and to ensure that policing can meet the needs of our community. I welcome the efforts of the Minister's predecessor in acknowledging the underfunding of policing and justice, and I hope that the Minister will continue in that vein. While difficult choices have been made on prioritisation, it is vital that we see the same step change in approach from all Ministers in how they spend their allocations, if we are to deliver on the Programme for Government commitments. We need a genuine commitment to public service transformation and reform that goes beyond the mere lip service that we are used to. The time for reviews and consultations is over. Meaningful action is required in so many areas, be that hospital reconfiguration; reviewing the funding and governance arrangements for NI Water, where the status quo is hampering economic development, contributing to a housing crisis and destroying our environment; the approach to major capital projects, which has resulted in an overspend of £3 billion, as highlighted by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week; or, as we have debated, meaningful action to tackle the cost of division in our society so that we fund services and not segregation. It is true, of course, that our finances are constrained, but those constraints cannot be trotted out as a lame excuse for indecision or lack of delivery, as we witnessed recently with the Minister for Infrastructure blaming austerity for a failure to pedestrianise Hill Street at a cost of £5,000. As the Fiscal Council's report clearly illustrates, we must take action to ensure that we are in a better place ahead of the 2026-27 financial year as regards moving towards multi-year Budgets, which, as the Chair of the Committee said, is essential for forward planning, but also ensuring that we do not face a cliff edge and that our funding is properly baselined and indexed at a level that adequately reflects our relative need. While I welcomed the appointment of Professor Holtham to conduct a review of our relative need, it is disappointing in some senses when compared with the experience of the Welsh Government, who appointed an independent commission that was, at least at first glance, superior in the resource and time that was available to it to complete its work. I fear that we are, as I said yesterday, at the eleventh hour as we rapidly approach the second stage of the spending review, in which we can secure changes to our funding formula. While much has changed at the Assembly over the past year, it is unfortunate that the wider context of the UK public finances has not changed. Tory austerity has, in many respects, been replaced by Labour austerity, with government decisions compounding rather than easing pressures on communities and public services in Northern Ireland. The UK Government have a crucial opportunity to do the right thing by revisiting their economic strategy to ease pressure on businesses and workers, to pursue progressive taxation and to revise our relationship with the EU to secure economic growth.

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

Assessment

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

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