Debate contribution: Administrative and Financial Provisions Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on 20 April 2026.

MLA: Miss Deirdre Hargey
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
Date: 20 April 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Executive Committee Business
Heading: Administrative and Financial Provisions Bill: Consideration Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5493943

Text

I thank the Minister for the legislation. As other Members have said, it is a wide-ranging Bill with 20 clauses across a number of Departments. Obviously, good work has been done at the Finance Committee, and also engagement across the other Committees that are impacted on and have been feeding into the process and into our deliberations. I take on board Matthew's point that it is seen as quite a technical Bill, but when you look at the implementation of it, it is about looking at strategic investment funding to build our economy and job creation. It is around economic support and giving the Department for the Economy the power to look at financial support for our local businesses. It is also looking at greater flexibility and the ability to extend the scope of existing funding for victims and survivors, particularly those pertaining to the impact of conflict, mother-and-baby homes, the laundries and the workhouses, and also looking at the emerging issue of ending violence against women and girls. Therefore, while it is technical, the outworkings of this work are having an impact across many of our communities, particularly those with vulnerabilities and those that are often left out of such support, such as women and victims and survivors. On the amendments beyond the main scope of the 20 clauses, we support the first amendment, which is the provision to enable teacher training and education bursary schemes. We are all aware of the huge challenges in our education system, particularly in STEM and Irish-medium education. Therefore, anything that can address some of the challenges that those two areas of work face is positive, and I believe that the amendment can help to do that. Amendment Nos 2 and 3 relate to clause 17. Sinn Féin supports applying the affirmative resolution procedure. As the Chair said, there has been some discussion on the issue more broadly. I am glad that the Minister for Infrastructure recognised that and asked the Finance Minister to take the amendment forward. While there were some initial concerns about charges, and parties may have had a difference of opinion, one of the key issues that came out of the consultation and engagement was that dealing with an administration charge would allow the scope of the scheme to be extended to other protected groups that do not fall under the SmartPass scheme at the moment. Therefore, if we can broaden that scheme through these provisions, that is positive for those communities as well. I reiterate our support for not approving clause 20. As others have said, we will continue to look at scrutiny.

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

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