DUP lavishing taxpayers' money on North/South bodies
01 December 2008
Statement by TUV Leader Jim Allister MEP:-
“One of the loud pre-devolution boasts of the DUP was that once in power they would rein in the north/south bodies of the Belfast Agreement and cut out their waste of taxpayers’ hard earned cash.
So, a year after devolution, in May 2008, I sought information on exactly how this calling to account of the north/south bodies was going and by how much the DUP Finance Minister had trimmed their budgets. Now, 6 months after asking, and complaining to the Ombudsman about the delay, I’ve received the information. The embarrassing reality that far from trimming their costs the DUP has been rubber-stamping their every lavish demand, no doubt explains the reluctance to answer my questions.
I am dismayed that with no questions asked every north/south body got every penny of public funding they demanded. There is not a single local department which was so treated, every one of them saw their funding bids cut, but not the north/south bodies.
As appears from the attached Annex, not one penny was held back from a single north/south body by DFP. So much for reining them in and calling them to account. Moreover, on average, their 2008 Budgets were sanctioned to rise by 10% - well above inflation. So, while local departments are subject to efficiency savings, the north/south bodies get to squander as much of our money as they seek, going up from a spend of £119m in 2007 to £130m in 2008.
Sadly, once more it is clear that despite all the pre-devolution rhetoric the DUP has settled in to enthusiastically working every facet of the Belfast Agreement, and they are prepared to lavish whatever money the cross-border bodies demand. Shame on them!
These tens of millions, in the present straightened circumstances, could be spent so much more prudently and beneficially for the hard-pressed people of Northern Ireland, but instead, by DUP sanction, it is wasted on the all-Ireland apparatus of the Belfast Agreement.”
