Sammy’s Weekly Column – Devolution delivering
I think I became an Assembly fixture this week as I sat through about twelve hours of debate on this and next year’s budget. The topic was the rather esoteric Spring Supplementary Estimates, a huge volume of information on the spending of each department. Of necessity my opening speech had to contain all the technical jargon which might have made the financial anoraks salivate, but would put most normal people to sleep. Votes on account, supply resolutions, consolidated fund, operating and non-operating accruing resources, efficient cash management regimes, and so it went on, but behind all the jargon was a story worth telling.
Put simply the Spring Supplementary Estimates give official authorisation to the spending activities of government departments over the last year and authorise expenditure for the first few months of the next. They tell the story of what has been delivered by government departments in terms of services and investment which impacts on all of our lives.
If you were to read the local papers, listen to political analysts, and pay heed to the professional complainers you could reasonably assume that no decisions were made by the Assembly, no consideration was given to the needs of the population and nothing had been achieved by devolution. The fact is that last year £13,772,054,000 was spent by various government departments in N.I. This money impacted on all our lives and unlike the situation under direct rule nothing was given back to the Treasury in London because budgets were not properly managed.
Here are some of the results of the spending decisions made :
- 14 major school building projects have been completed with a further two to complete soon.
- Local universities received £203m for teaching, learning and research so vital to the skills needed in our economy.
- The Health Service purchased 66 new ambulances.
- A new technology and skills centre was opened at South West College and a new further education college has been started at Titanic Quarter in East Belfast.
- Work has started on a new regional hospital in Enniskillen and a new Health and Well being centre in West Belfast.
- A new Dementia Services Development Centre and Knockbreda Health and Care Centre have opened in Belfast whilst the Downe Hospital in Downpatrick opened in May.
- A £17m contract was signed to provide additional dentists in areas where a shortage of dentists made it difficult for people to receive National Health treatment.
- 1750 social houses and 500 affordable houses were built, putting us on track to achieving the target of 10,000 new social and affordable homes by 2013.
- 1268 farm businesses received letters of offer for grants under the farm modernisation scheme.
These are but a few examples of the delivery of improved infrastructure and jobs over the last year. Of course little of this was reported by the sceptical scribblers who pass themselves off as journalists in N.I. They were too busy looking for bad news stories or seeking an opportunity to dig up some point of disagreement because controversy and gloom and doom give better headlines.
As many of those who took part in the debates argued, the future will present challenges for us as Westminster tightens the finance available to all areas of government including N.I. There will be hard choices to make. Do we try to raise more money locally by increasing local taxation, and introducing charges for water? Are there things which government does at present that it will have to stop doing? Can we look at different ways of doing some of the things we do in order to reduce costs? Which budgets should be given priority and which should we cut? Are there efficiencies which we could achieve in the way we run Stormont and government departments? Are there opportunities for cooperation with the Republic of Ireland and Scotland to avoid duplication of provision of some public services?
Of course others just buried their heads in the sand and gave a wish list of new things they wanted money spent on. They appeared to be oblivious to the basic fact that more money spent on one thing left less money to be spent on other things. They are not worthy of the trust placed in them by the public when they behave in such an infantile manner.
I accept that not every pound spent has been spent wisely. It is the job of ministers and Assembly committees to examine spending to cut out wasteful and unwise spending and to make decisions about priorities for the future. That will mean disappointing lobby groups and special interests but it will be the sign that the Assembly and its Executive are achieving the political maturity which is needed for government and moving away from the irresponsible “gimme more” mentality which was unfortunately promoted by the lack of political engagement during the years of direct rule.
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