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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]
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