Northern Ireland budget

Over the Welfare Bill impasse, a few points of clarification should do it for anybody with sense

Brian Walker on May 13, 2015, 2:39 pm

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In her first move as finance minister, Arlene Foster is right to echo Theresa Villiers in ramping up pressure to implement the Stormont House Agreement and pass the £ 10 billion budget and the Welfare Bill. Unless Sinn Fein gives way, the budget will have a £500 million gap. Funding for 30,000 public sector redundancies will be withheld and corporation tax will not devolved to Stormont. No doubt before the election the DUP were hoping for a modest improvement in what was …

The phoney crisis over the Budget is an indictment of our politics

Brian Walker on November 5, 2014, 10:22 am

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The brinkmanship over the budget is over. The emptiness of a threat to return to Direct Rule has been exposed. Martin McGuinness’s attempts to create a late Hallowe’en scare over the prospects of what Direct Rule might mean in reality amounted to the agenda for future Executive action that still awaits – including water charges and perhaps some hike in university tuition charges for the many who can afford them. The parties belatedly bowed to the inevitable at a cost of an unnecessary …

Budget, what budget?

Brian Walker on December 21, 2010, 12:23 am

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Reaction to the Northern Ireland budget becomes more confusing as time passes. Northern Ireland is the exception among the three devolved governments, in that pressure to adopt greater taxation powers is not coming from the local adminsistration, but from Westminster. The supposed mandatory nature of the all-party coalition can’t take the whole blame or indeed much of it for failure. It’s shared among the parties and is strategic rather than purely party political. To make £4 billion of cuts in as many years, the Executive seems …