TUV has its say on Stormont Budget
16 February 2011
TUV has published its response to the Sinn Fein/DUP Budget (click to download).
In a hard-hitting critique the Party says the proposals do not amount to a real budget at all, but a collection of disjointed declarations of rudimentary spending plans from the various fiefdom departments.
Commenting, TUV spokesman David Vance, said, “Even its supposed fund-raising projects are discredited, with no legal basis to secure money from Belfast Port, asset sales in a doldrums market and the crowning glory of a plastic bag tax which itself requires Treasury authorisation and legislation. Then when they come to the spending plans they are a hopeless hotch-potch, with no common vision, goal or identified target for economic betterment.”
TUV challenges the consultation process as equally flawed and falling far short of specified legal requirements.
Turning to specific contents, the Party is strongly critical of the Sinn Fein agenda at play within the spending priorities, particularly the ring-fencing of capital for the Maze project, while DETI concedes it will have no money for new factories, but Conor Murphy can prioritise hundreds of millions to build the Dublin to Donegal motorway, the A5.
The failure to make £400m savings by reducing the drain of the “useless North/South bodies”, is the focus for particular criticism. “Sadly”, says Jim Allister, “because the North/South bodies are Stormont’s sacred cows, they’d rather see the health service go short than cut out such patent waste.”
The Party deplores that party political considerations, particularly the anxiety of the DUP to attack the UUP, has dominated and shaped the allocations in the vital health budget. The result is that we are significantly falling behind GB in per capita expenditure.
TUV’s conclusion declares, “Sadly, instead of a balanced, coherent budget to see us through the pain of tough times, we have a political hotchpotch from conflicting fiefdoms, that doesn’t even merit the description of ‘budget’, packaged in a consultation process which is a farce and delivering nothing of substance for the hard-pressed people of Northern Ireland.
“Unless and until we get to a system, through voluntary coalition and a vibrant opposition, where common cause and direction binds the parties which govern, then nothing will change for the better. The vacuous nature of this budget is evidence in itself of the unworkability and absurdity of mandatory coalition.”
