David Cameron lacks desire to engage with Northern Ireland

News that David Cameron and Enda Kenny were heading to Stormont has been known within political circles for the last week, but little information was known about what gifts Cameron intended to bring to Belfast.

In the end, his package was not enough, a recirculation of money already promised, rather than anything new - “penny-pinching”, in the words of Sinn Féin and, even, some Unionists.

The level of understanding between London and Stormont, never high, is at near-historic lows - largely on the back of Cameron's lack of desire to engage with Northern Ireland politicians, and his impatience with them when he has.

Equally, Cameron and others in and around Downing Street believe Northern Ireland has been living in a fool’s paradise in recent years, believing that a year of spending cuts could affect everyone but them.

In October, Chancellor George Osborne gave an emergency £100 million (€126m) loan from the National Reserve to ease a £220 million shortfall that saw Stormont heading to the edge of breaking its budget.

Privately, Osborne and others tire of hearing Sinn Féin and the SDLP’s objections to welfare cuts. Meanwhile, they believe parties on all sides have little understanding of the pain that has already been taken in Britain.

This time, Cameron said he offered and extra £1bn. However, it largely consisted of using the Northern Ireland Executive’s current borrowing power, known as the Reform and Reinvestment Initiative, for other things.

Under it, Stormont can borrow £200m a year for infrastructure.

Instead, Cameron suggested that this year’s possible lending and half of that over the next five years would fund redundancy packages for public servants.

In Belfast, Cameron said: “We worked together very hard with the parties on a deal that we think represents really good progress”, Mr Cameron said in a statement delivered alongside Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

“It would involve comprehensive addressing of the issues of the past.

It would involve devolution of parading. It would involve Northern Ireland having the devolution of corporation tax.

“And in addition to that I was prepared to put on the table real spending power, new spending power, for the Northern Ireland executive to sort out some of the issues that it faces, spending power of, if everything was agreed, potentially as much as £1bn.

“But a deal hasn’t been possible. What I hope will happen now is the politicians here in Northern Ireland will work together to agree these vital issues about parades, about flags, about the past, about their budget.

“If they come to an agreement then that sort of financial firepower can be brought to bear. But of course if there isn’t an agreement then that financial firepower isn’t there,” he went on.

This month’s offer to devolve corporation tax to Stormont was put up partly as a temptation to the Stormont parties to agree a deal, including one on the budget cuts, before Christmas.

But it was a conditional offer. Power would not be devolved without it. From the Conservatives’ point of view the offer has fulfilled its purpose. The offer was made, but not taken up.

However, it remains on the table for any talks that can be held in coming weeks. A deal of some form on the Stormont budget has to be sorted by the end of January, if a threat to its existence is to be avoided.

In the meantime, it remains an uneaten carrot for the Democratic Unionist Party to consider as part of a price for supporting a minority Conservative administration after the May election.