Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Main Estimates 2025-26
Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on .
- MLA
- Mr Timothy Gaston
- Party at the time
- Traditional Unionist Voice
- Date
- 3 June 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Executive Committee Business
- Heading
- Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Main Estimates 2025-26
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4985913
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I begin by drawing Members' attention to the total resource and capital expenditure on page vii of the Main Estimates document. It amounts to some £30·8 billion for services in Northern Ireland. Leaving out the non-cash items, the net requirement is some £27·4 billion. We should keep that figure in mind every time that a Minister comes to the House and laments the lack of public money coming from Westminster.
Fundamentally, that expenditure is possible because of the grant to Northern Ireland from Whitehall, which is approved by Westminster in His Majesty's Treasury Northern Ireland Office Main Estimates 2025-26.
The truth is, as the Estimates show, that it is great to be British — I am sure that the Minister will agree — and all the moaning from this place about an alleged lack of money does not obscure that reality. If only the Executive would spend our funds more wisely and efficiently. It seems that, once the "Made in Stormont" logo is attached to the Budget, the wastage begins. If Members want evidence of that, they need only turn to table 5 on pages xxii and xxiii. There we have a summary of our expenditure that rests on the sole authority of the Budget Act. When we last debated the Estimates, I drew Members' attention to a document on the Department of Finance website titled, 'Managing Public Money Northern Ireland'. Paragraph 2.5 of that document deals with securing adequate legal authority and states:
"The Assembly usually authorises spending on a specific policy or service by approving bespoke legislation setting out in some detail how it should work. Departments should ensure that both they and their ALBs have adequate legal cover for any specific actions they undertake."
However, here we are again, voting on giving over £13·3 million to Departments with no bespoke legislation in place. The Department of Finance document says that the authority of the Budget Act should be relied on only in "certain limited circumstances" and normally for expenditure of "no more than £1·5 million". Yet, in the case of just one Department — the Executive Office — we are approving not one but four such schemes. With over £12·5 million of services being delivered without specific Assembly legislation, the Executive Office is acting in a fashion that is arrogant and disrespectful to the Assembly. I will stay with the Executive Office for a minute. I note that, on page 168, no income is listed under resource connected to historical institutional abuse. Let me spell out what that means: it means that the institutions in which children suffered abuse, usually but by no means exclusively at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, have failed to contribute a penny to their victims. That is a scandal, and it was a shameful failure of the Assembly not to build into legislation a requirement for them to contribute to the scheme up front. I hope that that lesson has been learned for future redress schemes that go through TEO. In Scotland, money is paid up front, but not in Stormont. I will move on to one of the sacred cows of the Assembly: the North/South bodies. On page 14 of the Estimates, we are told that the resource spend on the Loughs Agency is £44,444,000. That is a body that, as I spelt out last week, could disappear in the morning and no one would notice, as its functions are performed by other bodies and it offers only duplication. On page 118, I read that £2,117,000 of resource spending will go to Safefood. I am sure that its employees in County Cork will be grateful, but not one person in Northern Ireland will be employed with that money. That is a scandalous waste when our health budget is under severe pressure. I turn to page 192 and the spend on the Assembly Commission, which is over £62·6 million. Why is that so generous? It is partly because of the Assembly Members (Remuneration Board) Bill that the establishment is so keen to rush through the House in order to give MLAs a pay rise. As I learned recently, it is also to fund the media monitoring service, so anyone who dares to be critical of the Assembly and how it operates should know that, when they are on the radio or TV, their every word will be transcribed at the public's expense. Last month, the Commission tendered for such a service at a cost of £35,000 to the public purse that, I assume, is included in the figure of £62·6 million. I ask the Minister, whose Department operates the media monitoring service, this question: is he content to spend that money on that contract? Is it a prudent use of public money? Why do we have two sets of civil servants or contracts, as it will be in the case of the Commission, monitoring the media at public expense? Who benefits from that service? I had never heard of it until I came to the House. I will finish by saying that I want to put pressure on the Executive. We have the Programme for Government and the Budget. When the Programme for Government was laid out in front of us, it was hailed as a new dawn for the Assembly and for how we would get things done in the House. The Budget does not stack up. It does not meet the commitments in the Programme for Government. We have already seen how 50% of our social housing will not progress this year because of a lack of funds. This place needs to get its house in order. I hope that, when I stand here in future years, we will have a Programme for Government and a Budget that match what has been committed to.
966 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.22 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.86).
- The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.53).
- Subject area: Religion and belief (including people of no religion), churches, faith communities and religious prejudice (including antisemitism and anti-Muslim prejudice).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.08 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.26 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.03 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.36 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.22 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.86 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.22 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing | 0.43 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.01 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.03 |
| Adopts it (chosen) | 0.53 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| Religion and belief (including people of no religion), churches, faith communities and religious prejudice (including antisemitism and anti-Muslim prejudice) | 0.84 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.07 |
| Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism | 0.05 |
| No identity-related subject | 0.02 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.02 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:46 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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