A failed budget from a failed regime
09 March 2011
Statement by TUV Leader Jim Allister:-
“The inter-Executive rancour over the Budget is but a token of the unworkability of mandatory coalition. They might claim mere existence for 4 years as their sole achievement, but hard-working families are not impressed that Stormont’s greatest claim to success is keeping themselves in jobs, while all around their mismanagement causes waste and misery.
“Government is judged by delivery. In Stormont’s case the product is singularly unimpressive: a doubling of unemployment, education ruaned, and a health service in decline with a staggering 55,000 citizens waiting over 9 weeks for appointments.
“The Sinn Fein/DUP budget is a sham, designed more to discomfort the Executive’s minority parties than address the priority needs. On a day when it is confirmed that Peter Robinson, when Finance Minister lost £200m in buying land from DARD at Crossnacreevy worth less than £5m, it is appalling that the budget he and his Sinn Fein buddies offer puts health spend below UK parity, but ring-fences for continuing waste £400m on useless North/South bodies, £20m for the Maze Shrine project on top of the tens of millions wasted on projects that never proceeded, like local government reform, ESA and the Stadium.”
