A tax on mobile phone masts and a 15 per cent pay cut for Assembly members at Stormont are among proposals outlined by Sinn Féin today to offset the £2 billion of looming spending cuts.
Greater sharing of health and education services with the Republic and a restructuring of Northern Ireland's Housing Executive’s finances are also included in the party’s economic blueprint
Claiming the plan could realise £1.9 billion in the next four years, senior party figures insisted that major cutbacks to public services are not inevitable and the region can instead invest its way out of the recession.
Party president Gerry Adams stressed he wanted to gain consensus among other parties and develop an agreed strategy to tackle the region’s economic woes.
Outlining the key planks of the There is a Better Way document, Mr Adams said: "We are not putting these out as a manifesto, we're not putting them out as a wish list, we're engaging with the other parties on them, we will engage with every sector.
“We want consensus, we’re open to any other proposals that people will bring forward and it’s all about protecting the most disadvantaged, protecting public services, about seeing our way through the recession but building our economy in a way which brings everyone what they are entitled to, which is a modicum of prosperity.
As expected, the strategy does not include the implementation of water charges on householders. The party said that relief and others - such as the freeze on rates, free travel for older people and free prescriptions - should be protected.
Instead, Sinn Féin wants to charge mobile phone companies £2,000 a month for each of the 1,700 masts in Northern Ireland - a levy that would generate about £40 million a year. The party insists that the executive already has the power to implement such a tax.
They also want the Housing Executive to be given the power to borrow funds against its £250 million assets from the international money market to enable the body to become almost self funding.
As well as specific proposals, the party restated its call for the devolution of full tax-raising powers from Westminster to the power-sharing administration.
Mr Adams said the projected cut to the block grant from the coalition government would hit everybody. “This will affect every single citizen,” he said at the launch of the document in Parliament Buildings. “It doesn’t matter if you are Protestant or Catholic, nationalist or unionist, doesn’t matter about your ideological position, every single citizen will be affected if the Tory government bring in the type of cuts that are being speculated about.”
But he added: “Don’t let anybody sell you the idea that we just have to lie down, there is a better way of doing this and these are some proposals about doing exactly that.”