Debate contribution: Budget 2026-29/2030: Reports

Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on 11 May 2026.

MLA

Mr Eóin Tennyson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

11 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Budget 2026-29/2030: Reports

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5523678

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Like others, I welcome the opportunity to reflect on the Finance Committee's report on the draft Budget, although it is incredibly disappointing, as others have reflected, that we do so in the absence of agreement on a Budget more than a month into the new financial year. That delay is creating uncertainty and operational risk across all Departments and all public services as well as for our constituents, who rely on those services. It is not as simple as saying that the Budget should just be agreed as it stands; we must be clear that that would mean cuts to public services of upwards of £700 million in the first year. I do not think that any of us in the Chamber would wish to advocate or stand over such an untenable and unsustainable position. The current proposals create serious difficulty for every Department in meeting statutory requirements, but the most extreme example is the situation facing the Department of Justice. As the Chair of the Committee has just reflected, at the end of the three-year Budget cycle, the shortfall facing the Department would be over £210 million, which is equivalent to the budgets of the Prison Service, the Probation Board, the Youth Justice Agency and Forensic Science combined. That is not a workable or credible proposal. No amount of prioritisation or transformation in a Department would lead to that scale of savings. Since the devolution of policing and justice, the Department's budget has been squeezed from 11% of the block grant to just 8%. Significant reform and transformation has happened in that time, but there comes a point where you are no longer trimming fat and all that is left is muscle and bone in the system. We have reached that point. I acknowledge that significant progress was made in the previous Budget — we were able to start recruitment to the PSNI again, and money was made available for the data breach — but all of that good work would be undone in one fell swoop by the proposals on the table. There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about whether blame for the current crisis rests with Stormont or Westminster: the truth is that it rests with both. Decades of stop-start government, which has deprived the Executive of key opportunities to transform public services, combined with over 14 years of austerity, have left the Executive in that position. We are often told that there is an issue of credibility when it comes to the Executive's relationship with Treasury, but let us be clear: credibility cuts both ways. A bit like Pavlov's dog, politicians here have been conditioned to believe that they have to elevate financial or political issues to a crisis in order to get engagement and response from Treasury, which will get its cash book out to patch things up temporarily. That is what happened in 2023, when there was a short-term cash injection. However, the funding formula that was set out at Hillsborough Castle failed to deliver the long-term baseline funding and the fair settlement that public services and the people whom we represent deserve. We also fall into the trap of thinking that the only way out of the crisis is through revenue-raising. I have been open about thinking that progressive revenue-raising that ensures that the wealthiest in our society pay their fair share is a good thing. However, the idea that people in Northern Ireland, who deal with lower median wages and huge challenges with poverty, including fuel poverty, and inequality, should plug gaps created by Treasury is nonsense. The Treasury's open-book exercise, which was published in recent weeks, was an insult to the people of Northern Ireland. It was complete rubbish. It was cack-handed and inaccurate and did nothing to engage seriously with the structural issues facing our society and economy. It is not credible to say that public-sector workers should bear the brunt of the crisis. If we removed pay parity, which was one of the Government's proposals, we would see an exodus of public-sector workers over the border to work in the Republic of Ireland. We need to see stabilisation funding, with a view to longer-term funding, from Treasury. The Executive need to take responsibility for issues such as the transformation of public services. It is regrettable that, last week, the DUP and Sinn Féin voted against amendments that would have brought greater transparency and accountability to our politics to ensure that they are delivering. We need to move away from the cycle of patch-ups and towards a credible Budget, a fair funding settlement, real transformation and, importantly, political structures that will support that change.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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