TUV comments on Sinn Fein/DUP Budget
15 December 2010
In a preliminary response to the local Budget, TUV leader Jim Allister has denounced the Stormont Executive for failing to tackle its lavish spending on North/South bodies while imposing savage cuts elsewhere. He also challenged the bona fides of the 'Community Renewal Fund', describing it as a sop to Sinn Fein to keep funds flowing to the paramilitary fraternity.
In a statement Mr Allister said:-
"The Stormont Executive belatedly doing what they are overpaid to do, agreeing a budget, is not something demanding adulation, but rigorous scrutiny, because behind all the hype and spin are notable failures and shortcomings.
§ At the behest of Sinn Fein and as a disgraceful counterbalance to the necessary, but sadly inadequate, PMS package, there is what amounts to a new stream of paramilitary funding created through what is grandly but deceptively termed a 'Community Renewal Fund'. Thereby the Joint First Ministers will direct funding to favoured groups under the guise of community assistance. Just as the First Ministers shamefully prioritised EU funding for republican prisoner groups, so again under Sinn Fein rule we will see valuable taxpayers resources wasted on the paramilitary fraternity. Unlike the necessary PMS package, none of this money will be merely loaned, but will be squandered with no return.
§ The pay freeze on public sector salaries over just £21,000, imposed by politicians earning several times that, is unfairly punitive on working families on modest incomes.
§ No cuts in Stormont’s sacred cows: its own bloated bureaucracy and the useless North/South bodies, which will waste £400m over the next four years, not to mention the huge waste on the Irish language."
