Conor Murphy
Newry and Armagh · Sinn Féin · Northern Ireland
“More detailed consultations with individual childcare providers and parents are taking place this month and into February. The group agreed that the research would conclude in March 2025. The work is on schedule; there has been no delay. Childcare is an excellent example of various Departments coming together to deliver for our people.”
“The Bill looks at the issue of flexible working, but at every meeting that we have had with employers, we have made a point of talking to them about the need for them to be flexible, particularly in relation to women who are returning to the workforce, and to offer people arrangements that entice them back to the workforce and give them t…”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion. <BR /> <BR />Although the Department of Education leads on childcare, it is a priority for the Executive as a whole. When setting the Budget for this financial year, the Executive earmarked an additional £25 million for childcare.”
“As a matter of fact, I publicly launched the scheme and the courses in the Met last summer. My officials are also working with our six further education colleges to develop childcare microcourses for future delivery. <BR /> <BR />I also offered to assist Minister Givan's Department as required.”
“The group identified the need to better understand the business models for childcare, what type of support is needed to ensure the sector's financial viability and how support should be targeted. Given my Department's business expertise, we volunteered to take that work forward.”
“No tensions or obstacles have been placed in the way of any of that work, and I hope that that continues to be the case, because the issues are much more important than party political exchanges across the Chamber. We will continue to work in that manner.”
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“I do not have the exact breakdown between the two. That is the additional £4 million that we got in this Budget. I would not be so dismissive as to say it is a drop in the ocean, but it is not a substantive increase. That is why we have categorised it as a flat-cash Budget. It is for the Minister of Education to answer about the number of children who will benefit. Connectivity is hugely important. I had the opportunity to visit Derry airport yesterday when I was in the north-west. For that entire region, the connectivity that the airport provides with direct flights to Britain and Dublin will be hugely important for investment and ongoing business. We had an opportunity to speak to the airport operators and to council officials, who are the sole contributors to the airport, and we have managed to give them some support.”
“We have no indication that there is any difficulty with that. We anticipate it, and Departments are operating on the basis that the money will come through. The Member will know that it is way short of the NDNA commitments that were made when the agreement was reached. Nonetheless, those are financial commitments that were made to us, and we expect them to be followed through this year. It will assist with some of the more acute pressures but obviously will not manage the significant pressures facing all Departments.”
“It will be up to the Minister to allocate the funding to the programmes. However, there is a recognition that the infrastructure deficit has the knock-on effect of holding back NI Water from what it is required to do by the regulator and also from other potential investment and development from the private sector. The more we can get into that, the better. It is never going to be enough for every Department's needs, but the increase will be welcomed by the Department and NI Water.”
“As people will know, NI Water has a significant infrastructure backlog and deficit, and not only is that important for its work but, in turn, it is holding back other private sector developments that need the necessary sewage and waste water treatment infrastructure to proceed. We have committed a further £30 million of RRI borrowing to NI Water. NI Water's funding requirements are determined by the Utility Regulator, and increased investment is required to ensure that levels of service are maintained and that environmental and public health standards can be met. <BR /> <BR />The Department is investing, I think, £200 million in a number of areas such as the essential drinking water programme, the living with water programme and waste water treatment infrastructure, as required in the current price control period.”
“The pot is unlikely to meet all the requirements of the range of services provided across the Department of Health because it is, like all other Departments, very challenged. However, we are giving Health first shout on the June monitoring round, and we expect it to come back with a formal assessment of its needs. Hopefully, there will be enough in that pot, and there may be some to allocate to other Departments at that time.”
“We will not know what can be allocated in the June monitoring round until the Departments make returns. As it is the first monitoring round of the year, it is generally not the highest level of return. The tendency is that, as the year rolls on, Departments get a sense of what they can and cannot spend. Therefore, there is usually a limited return in June. <BR /> <BR />We have held back a significant amount of COVID money pending Health's assessment of its needs, and there will be Barnett consequentials from health spending in Britain. We are asking Health to make the earliest possible assessment of its requirements. If you like, Health is getting the first call on that pot of money, and when it makes its assessment, we will get a sense of what it needs to spend.”
“That information is in the chart. It is an increase on the expenditure that we have had previously. Some can be taken up through housing, and that will require a change to the rules and regulations on how the Housing Executive does its business. However, it is an improvement. It is not the total usage that we wanted to see, but there is an ability to carry over some of that. While we have managed to access most of the reinvestment and reform initiative (RRI) funding that was available to us, Departments need to continue to improve access to financial transactions capital, although I understand that everyone has focused on the response to the pandemic this year and, perhaps, people did not have the focus that that required. It is an improved position on previous years, but, nonetheless, there is more work to be done.”
“The Executive's priorities throughout the pandemic have been to protect the health service, protect the vulnerable and support the economy, and I imagine that we will continue in that mode over the year ahead, even if we have less COVID money. We want to ensure that vulnerable people are protected, and I expect all Departments to play a role in that.”
“It will be a matter for Departments to prioritise. The difficulty with a flat-cash Budget is that you end up not being able to deal with new areas. As the Member said, the increase in the numbers presenting for universal credit means that there will be a significant increase, particularly for the Department for Communities. We have managed to find some funding to support that Department with the additional staff that it will undoubtedly need. The Department's figures have doubled over the course of the past year, so it will need significant additional staff resource to cope.”
“It is frustrating, and it severely restricts the Executive's ability to plan and prioritise when we do not know, year-on-year, what funding will be available to us. I certainly hope that we will be in a changed situation next year. We will continue to engage with the Treasury, as I intend to do in the near future, hopefully by meeting them over there. We will press them on all those matters and on other outstanding matters.”
“We all recognise that a substantial amount of money is needed to rebuild the health service. The difficulty for us with a one-year Budget, particularly when it is a flat-cash situation, is that we do not get the necessary money to invest in reforming the health service. Therefore, we end up treading water and continuing to try to support health provision as best we can, but without making the improvements necessary to get more efficiencies into the system. It is a cyclical thing, where we do not get the necessary money for reinvestment. <BR /> <BR />As I said in my statement, I hope that this is a bridge to a multi-year Budget settlement. Over the past year, we operated on advice from the Treasury that we were going to have a multi-year Budget, only to get very short notice in November that that would not be the case.”
“I have no rationale for his delay in confirming that funding, but we have to have confirmation in order to include it in our final Budget.”
“It is in table 3.3 of the document. We are expecting £306 million from specific financial packages as well as additional money from the Chancellor's March Budget, which agreed to carry forward further Barnett consequentials. Some of that is money from previous commitments such as confidence and supply and NDNA. Of course, as the Member will know, what we received fell well short of what was committed in NDNA, so that is not included in the final Budget. In order to ensure that there is no delay in taking decisions, we have gone ahead and indicated allocations against that. <BR /> <BR />We have no reason to believe that any of that funding will not be made available, but I have no idea when it will be announced by the Secretary of State: that is a matter for him.”
“In NDNA, the Government in Dublin reaffirmed their commitment to providing that £75 million to fund the A5 project up to 2022, but no profile of the spend was stipulated. The A5 scheme has been the subject of a public inquiry, which has delayed progress. As such, no contribution was requested from Dublin in 2020. The 2021-22 forecast expenditure for the A5 is approximately £6 million at this stage. We anticipate that that will be funded from the Irish Government contribution, although that will, obviously, be kept under review. I understand that engagement is ongoing between the Infrastructure Minister and the Irish Transport Minister through the North/South Ministerial Council and, directly, on the delivery of the project and future capital contributions.”
“I have to say that there were opportunities in the latter part of the financial year to bid for things such as funding for road maintenance, but those bids did not come. We will continue to make best endeavours to work with all Ministers and Departments to see how we can assist in easing their pressures in the time ahead. For all the Departments, however, this will not be an easy year.”
“Given the time frames involved, there was not time for a significant reprioritisation exercise to be done. That would have seen some Departments, arguably including the Department for Infrastructure but perhaps not, depending on the Executive's discussions and decisions on those matters, getting additional money but other Departments losing money. The Executive therefore agreed to go forward with a rollover Budget from last year, with Departments getting the same amount. We have been able to add to the capital amount for the Department for Infrastructure but not to the resource amount, because we do not have that resource funding available. <BR /> <BR />We will continue to work with Ministers as time goes on.”
“The Member will know that we did not get the Budget outcome that we wanted. We have essentially had the same Budget allocation as we had last year, by which I mean the same amount of money. We have been able to stretch that through some carry-over of money through increased access to RRI borrowing, of which the Department for Infrastructure will be a beneficiary, and through making some upfront payments in the previous financial year that take the pressure off Departments for this year. For instance, we got some flexibility to purchase PPE for the Department of Health. Those are all small things that will ease some of the more acute pressures. <BR /> <BR />There are still substantial pressures on all Departments, however. The only way in which we could give some Departments all that they wanted was to take from others.”
“There will be huge financial pressures on them throughout the year. This is a flat-cash Budget, even with the additional COVID money that has been made available thus far. We are not certain whether there will be anything more, but we do not anticipate receiving anything like the same level of COVID spend that we had during the previous financial year. <BR /> <BR />There will therefore be ongoing challenges. Anything in-year relates to this year only, and, as the Chair will know, the projected cost of victims' payments is very substantial over the first four or five years. Although we have given a commitment at the courts to ensure that those payments will be covered and paid for, the question is this: from where will that funding come? That is an ongoing discussion with the British Government that is necessary.”
“That takes me on to some NDNA funding commitments and other funding commitments, and there is a table in the document that addresses some of the issues, including some of the NDNA issues that the Chair mentioned, such as Agenda for Change pay and the medical school in Derry, as well as a range of other issues, including confidence-and-supply money for deprivation, mental health and broadband. There is city deals money as well, which the Government were to allocate to us. We anticipate receiving that, and we have had no indication that it will not be forthcoming. We have had no indication to the contrary, so we are preparing on the basis that it will be forthcoming. <BR /> <BR />As the year rolls on, we will see what comes back in-year and what we then have to operate with. The overall picture for Departments is not good, however.”
“I thank the Chair for his comments and his questions, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Committee in the time ahead to make sure that it can properly scrutinise all these matters. <BR /> <BR />Some time back, the Secretary of State said that he wanted the fiscal council to be progressed before he could sign things off. Of course, as the Chair knows, the fiscal council was established some time back. I have heard nothing else since by way of explanation. I do not think that it is anything to do with the discussion around victims' payments issues, so I am not quite sure what the hold-up is. It is not ideal, because we want all the figures that are available to us to be included.”
“That arrangement suits me fine, a Cheann Comhairle.”
“The confirmed in-year allocations, while not part of the formal Budget outcome, will allow Departments to plan effectively and provide certainty to key priorities, vital public health services and schemes that will deliver economic and social recovery.”
“Members will be aware of my frustration that we have not been able to set a multi-year Budget due to restrictions that Treasury has set out in its spending review. I hope that this one-year Budget acts as a bridge to a multi-year Budget that allows the Executive to re-prioritise spending properly and plan for the longer term. Members will have received a Budget document detailing departmental funding by spending area, and I will return to the Chamber later this month to allow for a debate and vote on the 2021-22 Budget. That will allow Members further time to scrutinise the spending proposals in the document.”
“The remaining £103·9 million will be held for allocation early in the new financial year following a further assessment of health pressures. <BR /> <BR />On capital funding, the draft Budget provided investment funding of £1·75 billion, including funding from its reinvestment and reform initiative (RRI) facility of £140 million. The Executive have now agreed to borrow a further £30 million to provide additional funding to Northern Ireland Water due to the strategic nature of its pressures. That brings the total departmental capital allocations to almost £1·8 billion. That will enable investment in our infrastructure while supporting the construction sector. <BR /> <BR />The Budget seeks to protect key public services in a very challenging financial context.”
“Some £28·3 million of funding is being made available to the Department of Education to meet pressures in relation to recovery and support, and re-engagements for children and young people. In addition, the Executive have set aside £81 million to extend existing support schemes while lockdown restrictions continue to apply.”
“Other allocations from that funding include £9 million to tackle homelessness and £50 million to further support our health service. Those allocations reflect the priority that the Executive place on protecting the vulnerable and supporting front-line health and social care staff who have been at the coalface of the fight against the virus. <BR /> <BR />To help to deal with the economic damage inflicted on our economy by COVID, we have allocated £275·8 million in resource and £11 million in capital to the Department for the Economy to fund in full the economic recovery strategy. A total of £12·5 million is being made available for Northern Ireland Water pressures, and £6 million is being provided to the Department for Communities for its Supporting People costs.”
“However, as I mentioned earlier, to allow Departments to plan now, the Executive have agreed a number of allocations that will be formalised in-year. Those confirmed in-year allocations are also set out in the Budget document. <BR /> <BR />As set out in the draft Budget, in recognition of the impact that COVID-19 has had on businesses and households, we are freezing the regional rate for domestic and non-domestic customers. In addition, earlier this month, I announced a further rate relief package that will deliver additional support to almost 29,000 businesses in the form of a rate-free period for the next 12 months. That support will cost £230 million, and it will be funded from the additional COVID funding that has now been confirmed.”
“Choices will have to be made, and public services will have to be prioritised. <BR /> <BR />I now turn to COVID funding. The Executive had allocated the majority of COVID funding available at the draft Budget stage to the Health, Education and Economy Departments, leaving some £126·9 million for allocation at the final Budget stage. In the final Budget, the Executive have allocated all of that £126·9 million of funding to Departments, and the allocations are set out in the Budget document. The Executive have also considered the allocation of funding made available since the draft Budget. Due to the requirement for written confirmation from the Secretary of State, that cannot be included in the final Budget.”
“It will also fund the continuation of the public service route between Derry and London and the translation hub committed to in New Decade, New Approach (NDNA). <BR /> <BR />The Executive had previously committed to funding teachers' pay and safe staffing through the in-year monitoring process. To provide more certainty for those important issues, it has been agreed that those costs will instead be met up front from the funding confirmed for 2021-22. The Executive have also agreed to allocate £12·3 million to the Department of Justice for PSNI staffing. Again, that will be met from the funding confirmed for 2021-22. <BR /> <BR />For most Departments, the draft Budget outcome represents a flat-cash settlement, which will mean effective reductions once increased costs and demands on services are taken into account.”
“It is frustrating that the legislation means that we are at the behest of the Secretary of State for what we can and cannot include in our Budget, regardless of what has been confirmed by Treasury itself. However, we cannot allow that legislative hurdle to delay decisions on COVID support. It is imperative that decisions be made now on how that funding will be allocated. <BR /> <BR />I turn to funding for what might be described as "business as usual" issues. As well as significant COVID funding, the Chancellor's Budget provided an additional £4·2 million of resource DEL from non-COVID measures. Although that funding cannot be included in the Budget outcomes of Departments, it will be allocated to the Bright Start school-age grant scheme, which provides much-needed support in disadvantaged areas and rural communities.”
“Secondly, additional funding for the Executive was announced in the Chancellor's Budget on 3 March, and a more recent announcement of further funding for health in England will provide Barnett consequentials. Finally, Treasury agreed that some of the COVID funding provided in the latter part of the 2020-21 financial year can be carried forward into 2021-22. That is on top of the usual Budget exchange scheme amounts. Unfortunately, although that funding, like the anticipated funding mentioned in the draft Budget, has been confirmed by Treasury, it has not been confirmed by the Secretary of State and therefore cannot be included in the final Budget.”
“After the announcement on the draft Budget on 18 January, there commenced a period of consultation that ended on 25 February 2021. While such a short period of consultation was not ideal, it was necessary to ensure that a final Budget could be agreed for the start of the new financial year. The consultation responses and the departmental equality assessments informed the Executive's decisions on the final Budget outcome. <BR /> <BR />Since the draft Budget was published, there have been three main changes in the financial context. First, a small degree of funding was released following the reassessment of central items. That will be now be used to continue schemes under the Shared Future umbrella and to meet the budget requirements of independent bodies.”
“On 1 April, I provided a written ministerial statement on the final Budget that was agreed by the Executive. Today, I will follow that up with an oral statement to the House.”
“We have to make sure that there is value for money and that the relationship between the way in which government awards contracts and the people who are in the sphere to try to provide services to government is as efficient as it can be. That is why we took the permanent secretaries off the Procurement Board and put in practitioners from various fields, including from construction, the social economy and a range of areas with direct experience of dealing with government. We did that to make sure that people are talking the same language and so that we can get an efficient outcome from procurement policy.”
“First, I concur with the Member's remarks about the incident in Limavady. I appreciate his remarks in relation to LPS and the work that it has done. I think that, like the Department, LPS is looking forward to getting back to what it is supposed to do, which is collecting rates. There is still some more work to be done to get support out there, and it has performed that function very effectively. <BR /> <BR />We of course want to make procurement as efficient as possible, and we are not looking simply at social value and how procurement can be of benefit more broadly. Procurement has to be done efficiently.”
“<BR /> <BR />If we cannot resolve that with the Government, the Executive will undoubtedly have to meet the cost, which, as the Member said, will be anything between £600 million and £1·2 billion, according to the Government Actuary's Department. Then it will be a question for the Executive of how to find the resources to do that. If there is no additional support from Treasury, one way to do that is to top-slice from Departments and to take the year-on-year funding for the scheme off departmental budgets pro rata. Another way is to look at fundraising, but the cost associated with the scheme will be so significant, certainly over the first four or five years, that I doubt whether there is any fundraising capability in the Executive that would match it.”
“We have always wanted the scheme to be up and running and to be fully funded. We have never wanted a situation in which victims end up having to go to court to resolve those issues, creating further distress and uncertainty for dependants. We have never wanted to be in that place. We have tried to have logical discussions with the Secretary of State and others over a period of time, but those discussions were fruitless, have been difficult to arrange and continue to be difficult to arrange, so we have ended up in a situation that was not what we desired and was not of our making, but we have given undertakings to try to give that certainty to victims.”
“We have given an undertaking to the court that payments will be made and will be made on time, and we will hold to that commitment. We will continue to engage with the British Government regarding their responsibilities in relation to the matter. Under their own policy, they are responsible for meeting the cost of the scheme.”
“The British Government have not said that they cannot afford to fund the scheme; they have simply said that they are not going to fund it. They are well able to afford to do that, and, according to their own statement of funding policy, it is right that they do that. That is part of the rules that they established for their Departments and which, in this instance, they are disregarding. It is not a question of affordability for them. It is a question of affordability for us, but we have given an undertaking that it will be done however we find the resource to do it. Over the last two financial years, we have provided expenditure for administration, so we have already contributed to getting the scheme up and running.”
“My Department has responsibility for the Civil Service estate. We have put a proposition to Departments to reduce car parking spaces in Belfast city centre. There are very decent — some would say excellent — public transport facilities available to get people into the city centre. We have done that. We are doing it. Unsurprisingly, people who have been used to driving their cars and parking in the city centre sometimes take issue with that. Nonetheless, if we want to achieve the type of outcomes to which the Member refers, we have to look at our own house in the first instance. The logical follow-through of that is that, when we are planning any new building, we must ensure that public transport access is a feature. That follows through on something that we have already been developing.”
“"Ethical" can relate to policies on anything from the use of slave labour, basically, to production methods that are challenging or damaging to the environment and contribute to the climate change crisis. The Department wants to look at all those areas. Even though, in global terms, we are a very small procurer, I believe that we have a responsibility to lead by example on those matters. Therefore, I am keen that we bring policies on social value and ethical procurement very much to the fore in the time ahead.”
“As the Member will know, we have recently reconstituted the Procurement Board. We have added many more people with direct experience, both those who have procured in various Departments and those who have been at the business end of that, in order to try to improve the overall procurement function. We are looking very closely at that. <BR /> <BR />I intend to bring in policy on social value, which can look at a whole range of measures, including environmental issues, and ensure that we achieve the best outcomes and actually meet the Executive's targets in other areas, such as the reduction of carbon emissions, as the Member mentioned. We are happy to take all those issues on board. Not only am I open to looking at how we do our own procurement, but we have been looking closely at supply chains and ethical policies within them.”
“However, the Executive have given the indicative date of 24 May for full reopening of both hospitality and gyms. We sincerely hope that we are able to meet that date. That is the Executive's clear intention. We have given an undertaking to continue to support them through the LRSS up to that point.”
“Yes. When click and collect opened up for retail, we recognised that, although people could trade in some fashion, they were still a long way off normal trading and still significantly impacted by the restrictions that continue to exist. <BR /> <BR />Similarly, with hospitality and gyms, even though hospitality can operate outdoors, in a country like this, where you can never be certain about the weather, that can still be a very restrictive area in which to operate. Gyms, while they can open up for one-on-one training, as those of us who frequent them would know, a lot of the finance that they accrue is mainly from classes and the ability to take in groups of people to do training. Therefore, they continue to be significantly restricted.”
“We hope to see them paying out as soon as possible because, while there is optimism that things are opening up again and that people will be able to get back to business, we recognise that the effects of the pandemic will be with us for a long time and that people's ability to get back to the normal way of trading is some time off as restrictions will continue to apply in some shape or form for the foreseeable future. The schemes will be very important to try to support those who did not have the ability to apply to the LRSS and various other support schemes.”
“There are a number of schemes. In my enthusiasm, I announced this morning that applications opened today for the scheme for businesses that have a net asset value (NAV) of above £50,000 and were not able to avail themselves of business grants last year. They can actually apply to that from tomorrow. There are schemes to support manufacturing. There are top-up schemes of £5,000 and £10,000 for businesses that were not able to avail themselves of the localised restrictions support scheme (LRSS) or other supports over the last number of months. <BR /> <BR />Those schemes were developed because we know that there is an ongoing need for business support and to ensure that the COVID money that we had was allocated and would not be returned to Treasury. There will be further detail on those in the coming weeks.”
“While the First Minister, the deputy First Minister, the Minister of Justice and I have committed and given undertakings to the court to ensure that victims' payments are made — we have always wanted a scheme to be running to give victims certainty — we will continue to have a discussion with the British Government about the responsibility for the funding. However, the Executive will ensure that payments are made to victims.”
“I am not certain that there is a lack of confidence in my Department. I am representing the Executive's view on the funding arrangements for that. As he will know, the British Government's own statement of funding policy states very clearly that, where a Department has developed and legislated for a policy, it has responsibility for paying any costs that accrue from it. The victims' scheme that the British Government brought forward is vastly different from the scheme that was agreed by the parties at Stormont House. They have added very substantially to the scheme's scope and, consequently, to its cost.”
“That figure eludes me just at the moment, but I can provide it for him. Between the initial Budget outline of what was available for next year and the final Budget paper, which will be brought to the House very shortly for discussion and questions, we had a lengthy discussion on improving the position on the number of police officers that can be recruited. There has been an improvement. As he will know, once you recruit somebody and put them in post, that becomes a recurrent cost year-on-year. In some sense, while we can find money next year, that commits us to year-on-year recurrent expenditure. That is what the Executive have agreed to in its final Budget position. I will get the actual figures that are involved to the Member, but it is an improvement on the draft Budget position that was outlined previously.”
“I am not aware if that has been done. I imagine, given that the scheme was put in place, that an assessment of not only how it ran its course but its impact would be available. I am happy to talk to officials and provide the Member with some material, if it exists.”