Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2025-26

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 23 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

23 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2025-26

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5399739

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the spring Supplementary Estimates and the Vote on Account. Tomorrow, I will speak on the Budget Bill. I put on record my thanks to my colleague, the Deputy Chair of the Finance Committee, Diane Forsythe, who is stepping in to speak on behalf of the Committee in this timed debate due to the anomaly of my having an Opposition role and being Chair of the Committee. It is important to give both of those roles their proper due. That can be done in an untimed debate, such as the one that we will have tomorrow, but not in an untimed debate like this one. The spring Supplementary Estimates and Vote on Account represent something that is, at once, highly technical and procedural and also unbelievably important and central to everything that we do here as a devolved legislature. Often, we are wont to trivialise that role and communicate to the public that we are a trivial legislature, partially because we do not seem to be very fond of legislating. We have an abysmal track record of introducing and passing actual legislation in this mandate. I assume that the Supplementary Estimates will go through today and that the Budget Bill will go through tomorrow. Members will authorise spending of tens of billions of pounds. What could be more serious than authorising that spending? People who say that we do not have any power here to change people's lives and that all the power lies elsewhere should bear in mind the gravity of the responsibility that comes with that today. I want to go through a few points. Obviously, we will have a longer debate tomorrow, when we will be able to debate budgetary matters. The first point is about what is in front of us: the spring Supplementary Estimates. I have a hard copy of last year's Supplementary Estimates. I do wish that I had a hard copy of this year's document. People might say that that is trivial. We should not print things for the sake of doing so — lots of reports and publications can be distributed in soft copy electronically — but these are quite useful documents to have in front of you in hard copy. I have printed mine out. In section 1 of the introduction, there is a very straightforward table. People think that these documents are unbelievably complicated: they are when you get into their detail, but they are not in headline terms. The table sets out the Main Estimates and the total resource departmental expenditure limit (DEL) funding, which was £16·6 million, that we voted for last June. We are now going to vote through an additional £2·1 billion of resource DEL, which is for day-to-day spending and pay for public servants — we will come on to that topic; it has been in the public eye over the past few days — for the financial year that is about to end. We are told consistently that there is no money and that we are completely constrained. It is absolutely true that the UK Government have not consistently funded this place to our level of need. It is also true that we need a fairer funding model and more fiscal devolution. I want to hear more from the Finance Minister about when he plans to say more on those things and when they will be delivered. However, it is true that, since we voted in June, there is an extra £2 billion of day-to-day spending, which we are voting through today. I want the Finance Minister to explain to us how that money has been prioritised and how it has delivered meaningful change in people's lives. We have now been here for two years, and the public have a right to ask how that money is changing their lives. One way in which it has not changed their lives thus far is through improved delivery by the Department for Infrastructure, which the Minister used to head. The introductory section includes the spring Supplementary Estimates changes for the Department for Infrastructure and an example of where the Executive have not delivered. It is spelled out clearly in black and white. If you go to the page with the heading "Department for Infrastructure", which is a Department that the Minister used to lead, you will find under "Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit" the figure that we voted through last June and the change to the half a billion pounds that we are voting for today, which is a fall of £100 million. We are voting through a reduction in the expenditure limits for the Department for Infrastructure. What a strange thing to be doing. Why are we doing that? It is because the Department is not able to spend the money that it allocated last year. It announced that it was allocating money to the A5, the A4 and a whole range of other projects. Those projects are simply not being delivered now, so the Department has to hand back that money. We are told that the cause of all our problems lies elsewhere and that the Executive, or individual Executive parties, are not to blame. We hear, "Sinn Féin is not doing it right", "the DUP won't let us get that through", "London made us do it" or, "London made us not do it". Here is an example of the Executive's failure. They have an extra £2·5 billion from last June to be authorised for spending, but we will vote through one Department's handing back £100 million of capital funding, saying, "We cannot spend that money". That is the Department for Infrastructure, which is responsible for delivering modern road and rail infrastructure and for NI Water, which I will come on to. That really is a remarkable failure. I accept that a court case is still working itself out, and we all want to see a positive resolution to that, but the public have a right to ask whether that is acceptable. We move on to what was supposed to be the solution to all the haphazard budgeting that we are talking about today: a multi-year Budget. We were told repeatedly by all parties in the Executive that they wanted to deliver a multi-year Budget that would allow us to set proper targets for public-sector wages and allow managers and leaders in the public sector to plan for how many doctors, nurses, midwives, teachers and street cleaners we want to see in our society, but it appears that we are not getting that multi-year Budget. I am not sure where it is. I know that it is out for consultation, but, based on the utterances of the two main parties in the Executive, which are massively at variance with each other, there does not appear to be any realistic prospect of their agreeing a multi-year Budget. The multi-year Budget was supposed to be the answer to all the haphazard, contradictory budget-making that we see today in the spring Supplementary Estimates, with money being handed back and our having to vote through different totals because you were not able to properly plan and spend, but I do not think that we will get it, based on everything that we have heard. Perhaps the Finance Minister can update us on that. He talked about the strategic use of monitoring rounds being a solution to the problems that afflict NI Water. Talking about the strategic use of monitoring rounds is not 100 million miles away from talking about the strategic use of money that was found down the back of the sofa or was won at the bookies. Monitoring rounds are not for long-term planning; they are supposed to be used to deal with small and unplanned changes in spending that happen in-year. They will always happen, but you should not expect them. We have got to a preposterous situation. Yes, some of that has been created by the totally suboptimal way in which we are funded by the UK Government and the fact that the Treasury operates its devolved spending in such an unsustainable way. There are many examples in this document of where the Executive could and should have done so much better. That brings me to what came out the week before last, which was the reserve claim from the UK Government. The fact that people are forced to go to the Treasury in such a haphazard way is an example of the failures of our devolved financing system. We now have a planned open-book exercise that was announced, it would seem, by the leader of the DUP on the Floor of the House of Commons, rather than by the Finance Minister on the Floor of the Assembly. I would like to understand what that open-book exercise will mean and how it will improve outcomes for the public. Or, are we simply giving in to the UK Government as they try to undermine the devolved financial settlement even further? These things are not easy. The public did not have a right to expect miracles, but they did have a right to expect serious devolved Government, with plans and Budgets being set to match that. We have not seen any of that. We do not have a multi-year Budget. We have not had any coherent Budget to match what was in the Programme for Government, vague and waffly as it was. We have had evasion, deflection and blame shifting. We need to do much better. We will not divide on the spring Supplementary Estimates, but it is worth us all reflecting, given some of the coverage of the past couple of days, that this document includes the budget for the Assembly Commission. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is worth us all reflecting on public trust as we come to future discussions on other matters, including our pay. I will leave it at that at this stage. Let us do much better in the future.

1,669 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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