Debate contribution: Budget 2025-26

Debate contribution by Mr Mark Durkan on 19 May 2025.

MLA

Mr Mark Durkan

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

19 May 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget 2025-26

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4968712

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Budget is a masterclass in managed decline. It tries to paper over the cracks of the damage done by decades of disinvestment from London and dysfunction and a dearth of ideas here. As my party colleagues have mentioned, if "Doing what matters most" is the Executive's guiding principle, it does not appear to include "Doing things differently". If we had a pound for every time that we have heard, "Next year, we'll move to multi-year Budgets", we would be in a much better financial position. We have an Executive of optics who govern by press release. The carefully choreographed photo ops and promises of leadership for all are starting to wear thin. People still cannot get a GP or dentist appointment; their daily journeys are peppered with potholes; local businesses struggle to stay afloat and keep people in work; and the dream of owning or even accessing a secure home is nigh on impossible. The reality on the ground bears no resemblance to the press conferences in the Great Hall, and people are right to ask, "If this is leadership, why aren't our lives getting any better?". Let us begin where the cracks are most visible: our crumbling infrastructure. Some 70% of our road infrastructure is classified as "poor" or "very poor". For many constituencies, potholes are not just a nuisance but a menace. One kilometre of the Strand Road — a main arterial route in my constituency — has had 400 pothole repairs in the past five years, yet the area does not warrant resurfacing. The strategic road maintenance plan recommends an annual spend of £143 million to keep our roads in a steady and safe state. That target has not been met once in the past decade. Instead, we get patchwork repairs and escalating costs. The collapse of Stormont meant that fallback funding from monitoring rounds also vanished, and our roads, like other public services, were left to disintegrate. Meanwhile, compensation claims have soared to £25 million in the past five years. The cost of doing nothing is not zero; it is millions. This is not belt tightening; it is strangulation. We need investment in maintenance, not just vanity projects. The public are not crying out for flashy announcements or more consultations; they are crying out for their street lights to work, for their drains not to overflow and for roads not to ruin their cars. Once again, the Budget fails to confront the crisis in our water and waste water infrastructure. Northern Ireland Water and others have been clear: without improved and sustained investment, housing development will stall, pollution will worsen and public health will be at risk.

I thank the Member for that intervention. It goes up, but, in real terms, it goes down and, as Mr McReynolds highlighted, goes far below what is required and what was identified as being required in the price control plan. The Executive continue to kick the can down the road. Earlier this year, the Executive celebrated the long overdue housing supply strategy, but what hope is there of solving the housing crisis, if the infrastructure is not there and plans cannot be approved? Ms Mulholland outlined how the Budget will build nowhere near enough homes. The Executive, however, sit on hundreds of acres of vacant public land and own buildings that cost millions to maintain. Those are assets that could and should be repurposed to provide social and affordable housing. Emergency accommodation costs have ballooned from £700,000 to nearly £8 million. I raised the alarm on those figures years ago, but Ministers looked away and showed little appetite for confronting the consequences of inaction and its inevitable cost to the public purse and to people. We have constantly raised the need for an infrastructure commission to tackle capital overspend of £3 billion, but what has dominated headlines instead is a row about £150,000 being spent on Irish language signage at Grand Central station, which, by the way, is a project that ran over budget by tens of millions of pounds. The selective spats over such issues while we ignore the daily dysfunction bleeds public funds dry and sucks public confidence out of politics. We cannot advise people to leave their car at home when public transport is not up to scratch. One in five rural bus services have been cancelled. Fares have gone up multiple times, yet investment remains nowhere near what is required. In 2023, the South's rail network reported a 28·5% increase in passenger journeys: we had an increase of 7·1%. That underscores the huge disparity in investment. We need a reliable, affordable and regionally balanced public transport network to reduce car dependency, protect our environment and boost the economy. Is there money in the Budget for the remediation of Mobuoy dump? The cost of delay is mounting for the taxpayer and for the environment. It is the perfect metaphor for how the Executive operate: avoid action, avoid responsibility and avoid reality until things collapse in crisis. That collapse can clearly be seen in our health system, which is haemorrhaging staff, no longer just to better paid jobs down under but to Donegal. Waiting lists are obscene. People are turning to credit unions and other less reputable sources to borrow money for private care. We hope that the reimbursement scheme will help in part to address that situation, but we need preventative care, not just crisis management. We have heard much lately about the cost of obesity. The Barnett consequential from the sugar tax levy should be ring-fenced here to address related health issues such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Instead, there is a complete lack of political will to implement such simple solutions. Departments need to work together. The mental health crisis here continues to deepen, yet the Budget fails to address it. The removal of funding to vital services such as Northlands will leave more vulnerable people without the help that they urgently need and shift the burden to emergency services, Justice and the housing system. There needs to be more investment in policing and community safety. The Chief Constable has been quoted as saying that his budget is "beyond disappointing". Policing numbers are a cause for real concern. Response times are up, and confidence is down. The perception of policing is shifting, not on the basis of any political ideology but because of the public's struggle to access basic services. Communities do not feel safe because call-outs are not answered and many crimes are not properly investigated. We acknowledge that we need more money from Westminster, but we also need better ideas at Stormont. I will finish with a word on political hypocrisy. In the South, Sinn Féin calls for more water infrastructure investment, housing reform and an overhaul of planning. That is all laudable, but all of that is opposed or neglected when they sit at the head of the table here.

They are ruling by fooling.

1,156 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification