Stormont going from bad to worse - Allister
20 January 2011
Speaking on Wednesday 19th January to Ballymena Branch of TUV, Jim Allister described Stormont’s handling of the water crisis and the Budget as ‘bungling of unimaginable proportions’, which underscored why for so many people Stormont, as presently configured, was a lamentable failure.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
“Of course no one can shape the weather, but it is the job of government to prepare for winter eventualities. The failure by DRD and NIW to do so had catastrophic consequences, leaving 60,000 families without water for days and such mismanagement of communications that even reliable information wasn’t available. In
“Unless and until the system is radically overhauled, with government through the common cause of voluntary coalition, ministers actually accountable to the Assembly and a vibrant opposition to hold them to account, then, the good government to which we are entitled will evade us.
“As for the budget, its handling too has been shambolic. Instead of a clear and united vision, based on reliable figures, we have vicious inter-departmental fighting, no vision and certainly no template to deliver economic stability and job creation.
“Within the detail of the budget we get a glimpse of the dysfunctional charade which passes for government: no money in DETI for a single new factory, but £20m ringfenced to provide the Provo Project and Shrine at the Maze; an amazing cutback in cash for improving our water infrastructure so that hundreds of millions can be lavished on a cross-border motorway, the A5 from Dublin to Donegal via Tyrone, which we neither need nor can afford; cutback in help for farming but £13m for lavish new offices for DARD; waste on the Irish language, but not a penny cut from the £500m wasted on useless north/south bodies.
“This is a Budget out of touch with the real needs of real people, shaped instead to placate political shopping lists. A budget where building the Maze is more important than building schools or finding the money to staff vital health facilities, such as the cancer unit at Altnagevlin. Hatched between the DUP and Sinn Fein it is a patched up job, with no direction towards job creation or a strategy for recovery.
“In peddling this DUP/Sinn Fein budget, DUP knives are out for Ulster Unionist Michael McGimpsey, but not a whimper of rebuke for Murphy’s squander on the A5, or the prioritising of the Maze shrine project. Such is the pattern of failed DUP/Sinn Fein rule.”
