None of the executive ministers would have been expecting an early Christmas present when they gathered yesterday to discuss a draft budget for the next financial year.
The economic climate, in the euphemism generally employed on these occasions, remains “challenging”. Demand from departments far outstrips available funds and “difficult decisions” must be made.
Health and education, as ever, eat up the largest slices of the pie, with planned allocations of £8.4 billion and £3.2bn respectively.
Enormous sums, but insufficient to address years of neglect which have left hospital services on the verge of collapse and school principals reliant on handouts to keep lights and heat on.
Health minister Mike Nesbitt rightly highlighted a disconnect between the executive’s budget and its programme for government, which, although lamentably light on detail, identified cutting the longest waiting lists in these islands as one of nine priorities.
“Yet there isn’t a single mention of waiting lists in the draft budget, and therefore not a single penny to address that priority,” the Ulster Unionist minister said.
If Mr Nesbitt believes his executive partners are either unwilling or unable to take the radical steps required to rescue the ailing health service, how much longer is his position in this government sustainable?
Protection of Lough Neagh also appears to have fallen off the priority list, with environment minister Andrew Muir saying his budget does not give him the tools to address the issues that have caused toxic blue-green algae to blight the waterway in recent years.
The First and Deputy First Ministers insisted yesterday that they are doing their best to target limited funds where they are needed most, highlighting action on childcare, housing, agriculture, the wastewater infrastructure and violence against women and girls.
Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald also expressed hope that it would be their last one-year budget, with a move to multi-year allocations allowing the kind of long-term planning and certainty so desperately required across public services.
Of course the two main parties bear an enormous degree of responsibility for this situation by preferring petulance to partnership during repeated suspensions of the devolved institutions.
The Secretary of State clearly has little sympathy, suggesting Northern Ireland has received the “largest settlement in real terms since devolution” and reminding politicians that government is about making choices – including to generate its own income.
Whether it be revenue-raising or rationalisation, there is no doubt that for far too long the default choice at Stormont has been to avoid unpopular decisions.
That a budget has been agreed at all, in advance of a new financial year, is to be welcomed. However, after years of short-term thinking and stop-start government, the executive still has a huge job to restore public trust.
