Patsy McGlone 10th April 2009

Executive Must Act to Deliver Jobs - McGlone

SDLP MLA for Mid Ulster, Patsy McGlone has challenged the NI Finance Minister to “come clean” on the Executive’s finances and the three-year spending plan contained in the Programme for Government.

Mr McGlone was speaking after the launch of the SDLP’s innovative and acclaimed discussion paper on the Revision of the Northern Ireland Executive’s Budget, 2008-2011, “New Priorities in Difficult Times”. The document has been welcomed by prominent economists and people throughout the business sector.

“The SDLP have identified £408million of potential finance which could be used to support the Northern Ireland economy.

“The party proposes raising funds from a number of initiatives which include tackling the excess of bureaucracy; the best use of assets; redirecting expenditure; reorganisation and reform in addition to further ideas for creating revenue.

“In order to boost the economy the SDLP believe this money would be best spent creating and protecting jobs through help for small and medium sized businesses, retraining and upskilling, investing in social housing, protecting frontline health services such as the 750 nurses’ jobs currently at risk and boosting the construction sector.

“Here in Mid Ulster we have been hit particularly hard by the downturn in the building trade, and it is of the utmost importance that the Executive takes action to see that this sector is supported.

“This £408million has been identified at a time when the SF/DUP dominated Executive is refusing to look again at the many assumptions they made when concocting the three-year spending plan which is the Programme for Government and revise the spending priorities appropriately.

“Just this week a second leading NI economist, Richard Ramsey of the Ulster Bank, added his concerns about the “unrealistic” nature of the budget projections contained in that programme. Economist John Simpson has previously stated that the NI Finance Minister was “living with a fiction” in maintaining that those projections remained valid.

“It’s time for the Finance Minister to come clean with the public about the Executive’s finances. It is his responsibility to manage those finances and he should be open and transparent about the difficulties he faces rather than pretending that what was assumed at the height of the property price bubble, when the Programme for Government was written, is still true now. It isn’t, and the sooner the Finance Minister admits that the sooner the public can start to have confidence in the Assembly’s ability to deal with the growing financial storm we all face.”
 

ENDS 10/04/09

The SDLP’s discussion paper can be found here [PDF file]