Stormont Talks Latest Update

The current political and financial crisis facing the power sharing institutions has, in large part, been caused by the British government’s assault on the North’s block grant. Billions of pounds have been stripped from the executive’s budget over the last four years as the result of this austerity agenda by the British government.
The Irish Congress of Trades Unions has taken the Department of Finance figures and calculated that, since 2010, £3.6 billion cumulatively has been removed by the British from the North’s Block Grant. Today it is £1.1bn less in real terms than 2010.
The British government is fining the executive £5 million a month in response to Sinn Féin’s blocking of the introduction of the welfare cuts in the North. The executive has had to take out an emergency loan of £100m to continue delivering public services. Financial sustainability of public services has been pushed to breaking point. Structural weaknesses aside, there is not enough money to run the Six-County economy.

Cross-party consensus on need for financial package
The five Northern parties were unanimous in their call for a reasonable financial package. Sinn Féin negotiator and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said: “The British government must accept their responsibilities and bring to the table the political will to resolve the problem which they played a major part in creating.
“That means they will have to deliver a new economic package for the North which undoes the damage caused by this assault on the block grant. There is a consensus among all the parties that this needs to happen if the current negotiations are to reach a successful outcome.”

British government claim of new £1 billion package false
Claims that over one billion pounds was available from the British government to the executive quickly evaporated under scrutiny. The £1 billion in spending power offer by the prime minister is largely a borrowing facility which the executive can already dip into. It is not new funds.
The British Government also offered to provide £10m per year for the proposed Historical Investigations Unit. But this new legacy unit will cost between £30m and £40m per year. This is only one of the institutions proposed to deal with legacy issues. Over five years the executive will be £100m worse off.
The British Government also proposed that the executive borrow £100m per year for the next five years to pay for public sector redundancies. This is money the executive would normally use to invest in health, education and other infrastructure projects, which would then not be available.
Rather than establish a realistic peace investment fund, as proposed by all the political parties, the British Government suggested that the executive establish this fund through the sale of its own assets with no contribution from the British Government.
The net effect of these proposals would be that the executive would be up to £100m worse off, public services would be decimated, and we would owe the British Government £500m over five years.

Sustainable finances must underpin political institutions
The Northern political process and institutions cannot work without unconditional commitment to power-sharing and partnership government. But political agreement presupposes sufficient funding exists to make the economy work in the form of a viable Block Grant, fiscal levers to generate revenue, and economic stimulus, not austerity.
The fact is that the executive requires a different economic and fiscal model to run the north which reflects the difficult circumstances that exist, including the fact that it is a society emerging from generations of conflict and political instability. Without that the political process will not work.