Good news and bad news. The anticipated swingeing cuts to many public service budgets in Northern Ireland will be less severe than feared, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, revealed when he briefed the northern parties at Stormont on Thursday on the spending plans for 2023-2024. That’s because he has negotiated “flexibility” over the repayment of a ¤300 million overspend last year , previously expected to come out of the coming year’s budget, but now expected to be spread out over a longer period.
But the fiscal situation will still be extremely tight, with seven departments of state seeing actual reductions in their cash amount, and two others seeing only marginal increases. At a time of rampant inflation, this amounts to significant budget cuts in real terms, and that will cause hardship. Northern Ireland’s politicians have railed against the cuts, but much the same is happening across the rest of the UK, where Brexit and a decade and more of slow growth has hammered the public finances. The contrast with what is happening south of the Border is remarkable.
Of course, the background to all this is the continued suspension of the Stormont institutions due to the DUP’s unwillingness to operate them. It is the desire of the Irish and British governments, the EU, US president Joe Biden, the vast majority of MPs at Westminster and, most importantly, the majority of people in Northern Ireland that the powersharing institutions at Stormont should be revived. Whatever concerns the DUP has – as well as all the other problems that face Northern Ireland – should be addressed by a functioning Assembly and Executive.
But the DUP remains unmoved, and no change is expected in that position until – at least – after local elections in mid-May. Even then, there is no guarantee of progress before the marching season, and some senior officials now believe the autumn is a more realistic prospect for self-government to return. There is a belief that the DUP, and maybe other parties too, want to leave the difficult budget decisions to the British government and to civil servants before contemplating any return to the responsibilities of power.
The DUP is understandably concerned with the democratic deficit it discerns in the arrangements under the Northern Ireland protocol, even in its amended state since the Windsor Framework was agreed. It objects that EU rules in which the people of Northern Ireland have no say in making will be, in part, applied to the North. But the party seems strangely less concerned with the much greater democratic deficit inherent in civil servants making crucial spending decisions, with scarce resources, that are rightfully the preserve of the politicians people elect to govern them. The case for restoring the Executive grows stronger by the day.