Justice Minister: Budget allocation could mean ‘potential catastrophic failures’

An “inadequate budget allocation” could lead to “potentially catastrophic failure”, Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister has warned.

Naomi Long’s department, which has responsibility for policing, courts and prisons, was allocated £1.26 billion in the Stormont budget on Thursday.

Ms Long said with the exception of £8 million for the recruitment of new police officers, the allocation is swallowed up by inescapable pressures.

Addressing the Assembly’s justice committee, Ms Long said she cannot overstate the impact the budget will have on her department.

She described “inadequate funding from the Northern Ireland block grant” and said the Executive must continue to press the Treasury for more funding.

“We put up a fight for the Department of Justice and we did our best but I have to be realistic and say that with pressures three times the allocation, this was never going to be a good outcome for anybody,” she told MLAs.

She outlined challenges to her department including a high prison population, low police officer numbers and forecasts of a 30% increase in legal aid payments.

“Realistically, we will struggle not to breach our budget limit next year,” she said.

“I think at times the understanding of cuts to the Department of Justice budget, the impact on the community, is misunderstood, and I would say underestimated.

“We are not talking here simply about cases taking slightly longer to go through court, we are talking about potentially catastrophic failures that could lead to life-changing experiences for people, life-ending experiences for some people.

“Keeping people safe, protecting life, preservation of public order – those are all key things that we have to be able to do and we can’t really dictate the demand in the system.

“We remain committed to innovation, we remain committed to collaborative working and to transformation, and we have some creative ideas about things we can do even within a difficult budget settlement, but ultimately, the limitations that budgets will place on delivery and frontline services will be significant.”

Asked to elaborate on that, Ms Long said: “The reality is that as part of the role of the justice agencies and our justice partners, we are managing category one offenders, we are managing vulnerable people in prisons, we are managing people in the community who could pose a risk to themselves and others.

“And if we are not able to provide the levels of supervision in terms of our statutory duties, if we do not have the funding to be able for example, to respond, if the police are not able to respond speedily, if probation are not able to supervise all prisoners to the degree that they would wish, if prisons are overcrowded and potentially more dangerous then someone can lose their life.

“Someone can experience life-altering consequences as a result of a crime being committed against them and them being victimised.

“These are serious issues. They are not trivial issues, it’s not just about timing. It’s actually about preservation of life and ensuring that people are safe.

“That is our overarching objective as a department, keeping people safe, and if we do not have sufficient resource to be able to do that, then of course there could be catastrophic failures in the system.

“We do everything we can within our ability to manage that risk and to carefully manage that risk but as things become more strained, undoubtedly that risk will continue to increase.”