‘Panto season’ hits Executive amid row between ministers over budget

“Panto season” has hit the Stormont Executive amid budget tension between the Education and Finance Ministers, the Opposition has claimed.

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly said a tense letter exchange between Paul Givan and John O’Dowd, reported by the BBC, “outlines the challenges” the Executive currently faces.

Mr Givan is reported to have warned his department would “unquestionably overspend” this year without extra funding, to which Mr O’Dowd said any overspend would “directly negatively impact frontline services”.

Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has also sounded concern over his department’s budget.

Earlier this year he issued a ministerial directive to ensure the pay awards were made, and accepted the risk of an overspend.

The Executive is expected to discuss the draft plan for the first multi year budget in a decade, as well as the latest monitoring round during a meeting on Tuesday.

During questions for the Executive Office at the Assembly on Monday, Opposition leader Matthew O’Toole referred to “panto season”.

“We, the people of the north, deserve a multi-year budget, and have been promised it, but budget dysfunction has been going on, frankly, nearly as long as May McFettridge has been at the Grand Opera House,” he said.

“The difference is that May is entertaining, and unlike this place, she provides value for money.”

He asked for a guarantee that the next budget will be the first multi-year budget in over a decade, and that Ms Little-Pengelly’s party, the DUP, “will not block one”.

Ms Little-Pengelly said the exchange of letters between the ministers “outlined very starkly the challenges that we face within our core public services”.

“Health and education in particular, have made clear throughout this year, the pressure that they are under,” she told MLAs.

“This is not new.

“We know that there are big challenges and that until we can get to transformation, we will continue to run inefficient services, costing too much with what we have.

“So these are big issues for the Executive to take on.

“We must tackle that transformation.

“We must tackle inefficiency, and we must ensure that the money for our public services is going to those departments are being used in a way that absolutely maximise that.

“I believe that the Minister for Education is up for that.

“I believe that the Minister for Health is up for that but that is an important discussion, because, again, at the heart of this is we want excellent public services for the people that we serve.”

Mr O’Toole pressed again for a guarantee of a multi-year budget.

Ms Little-Pengelly responded: “We have a challenge at the moment within our big departments.

“That is no laughing matter.

“It is not a joke.

“It is a serious matter, and we will be engaging in that in the next number of days, and the next number of weeks, because I am fully supportive of a multi-year budget.

“There are challenges within that, particularly looking across all of the needs and the demands within each of those departments, but I am giving an absolute commitment to work with everyone to try to drive forward outcomes that we want to see.”