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.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,975 lines we hold for Conor Murphy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 60 of 100.
“I have encouraged all Ministers to try to reach out to anyone in the areas that they have a sectoral responsibility for who has not yet received any funding support. There are still such people out there and some sectors that we have mentioned where individuals have struggled to find the levels of support that they require. I hope that every Department that has responsibility for every particular sector will take up that responsibility and will try to ensure that they reach out to those people and find some way to give them support on time. As you said, that is particularly the case as we have funds available to do that, and, while of course we will look at contingency plans for spending those funds and making sure that they are spent, it is much better to try to get those to people who have not yet received some support.”
“I encourage sports clubs to apply. This is only coming in now, and LRSS has been paying out on a regular basis for some time. A lot of people who previously got the £10K or £25K grants believed that they were eligible for this. It was to try to put all the sports into one scheme to make sure that they get support for loss of gate receipts and loss of business and to ensure that they were not being rated for a huge premises when only a proportion of it was dedicated to hospitality or other such income-raising ventures.”
“The sports sustainability fund is intended to address loss of income, be that lost gate income or lost hospitality income, given that a number of those premises have a bar or perhaps even dining facilities in golf clubs and other such premises. We agreed that those sports facilities would go into the Department for Communities' scheme run by Sport NI to get assistance there. The purpose of that is that quite a lot of them have a much bigger rateable premises that they operate out of. Only a proportion of their facilities is the bar or food facility that might have attracted support from LRSS. <BR /> <BR />I would be disappointed to find that there are not sufficient funds in that to support them. As far as I am aware, the scheme is not yet fully subscribed, which means that there is funding available in it.”
“If there is a further query, and they have not heard, they should feel free to contact the Department to try to get an answer.”
“Some people who have been in contact have found that emails that had been sent to them were in their junk folder, so they had not accessed them. Therefore, in the first instance, I advise people to continue to check their emails. A high number of applications have been ineligible. A range of schemes are operating, and some people have applied to the wrong scheme and some have made erroneous applications. You would not believe the number of people who sent the wrong bank account details. That means that, when everything has been processed, we have had to go back to the start. Some people have made multiple applications for the one premises — sometimes, up to 14 or 15 applications for one premises. A lot of those factors will clog up the system. I would advise people to continue to check their emails and wait for a response.”
“The Member is correct in that a number of sectors, or sub-sectors, have yet to be properly reached by way of support. Some time back, I, alongside the First Minister and the deputy First Minister, met with representatives of the travel industry and agreed that they had a compelling case. Some travel agents have their own premises, but a lot of them work from home and do much of their work online, so they do not necessarily fit into the localised restrictions support scheme (LRSS). I have pressed Executive colleagues, particularly the Minister for the Economy, to try to find some way to provide support for the travel industry, and I hope to receive bids for that in the time ahead. I agree with the Member that the sector needs support, and we have to find some way to try to get that support to it.”
“Outstanding applications from the earlier phases of the restrictions are complicated to resolve, with some requiring up to four hours of work by a member of LPS staff to complete. Top-up payments were issued to businesses at the beginning of January. The complexity of the changes arising from the five phases of the health protection restrictions since the start of October has resulted in 27 possible levels of payment, depending on where a business is located and what kind of business it is. That has required some cases to be held back for additional checks, before the top-ups are issued, to ensure that there are no erroneous payments. Every effort is being made to do that as quickly as possible.”
“The support that the Executive have put in place for businesses required to close here is more generous than that available elsewhere. Our payment levels are between £800 and £1,600 per week, whereas, in England, for example, the support ranges from £333 to £750 per week. Therefore, the best help that we can provide is to process the applications that we have received as quickly as possible. <BR /> <BR />Some 89·9% of applications to the scheme have been processed by my Department. Staff in LPS are working as quickly as possible to resolve the outstanding cases. A high proportion of applications have been incorrect or ineligible, so it has proven to be necessary to check each one.”
“COVID-19 strategies come from the Department of Health; they do not come from the Department of Finance. We allocate funding according to the Executive's agreed priorities. I encourage a zero-COVID strategy and a North/South, all-island approach to all of this. There are many examples, from across the world, where all-island approaches have been very effective in reducing transmission and keeping people safe. It will be a matter for the Department of Health. It has collaboration and cooperation with the Department of Health in the South, but much more can and should be done.”
“If the Member's argument for the Union is that our begging bowl is occasionally filled, I should tell him that there are a lot of people in this part of the world who have much higher ambitions than just the occasional filling of a begging bowl in London. We would be much better off in charge of our own affairs; then, we might have known, over the course of the year, how much COVID-19 money we intended to give out and could have allocated it accordingly. <BR /> <BR />We are dealing with returns from a range of Departments, and, while I know that he wants to poke the finger at somebody, allocate the blame and punish the guilty and all the things he normally does, I am much more concerned about getting the money spent and getting support to where it is needed.”
“There is a concern that the lack of support means that people are less likely to isolate and take time off, thereby leading to a greater spread of the virus because, financially, they cannot do anything else but go to work. I am very sympathetic to such a scheme, and, of course, it will be for the Department for Communities to devise something. I am sure that the virus will be with us not just until the end of this financial year but into the new one as well, and such support is needed.”
“There has been some discussion about that. When we made the last allocation in December, we allocated everything out to Departments, with the exception of the £150 million that we were carrying over for rates for the next financial year and £26 million of resource that we had left. As I said, we were concerned at that stage that we had not, perhaps, carried over enough into this part of the financial year. <BR /> <BR />We are now dealing with returns from the Departments that made bids for funding that they said they needed and wanted to spend but which, for a variety of reasons, they have not been able to. It is a big challenge, and I know that there has been some discussion about a support grant.”
“The Department for Infrastructure had the largest capital budget that it had ever received in last year's allocation. No Department got all that it wanted this year because of the challenging situation, but we have added £70 million in RRI borrowing for Infrastructure. It will be up to the Minister for Infrastructure to allocate according to her priorities. It is up to Members — I am sure that that situation pertains in every constituency across the North — to raise the issue of unfinished housing estates so that it becomes a priority for the Minister for Infrastructure.”
“In the Budget statement that I made last week, I announced that we had met a significant capital bid from the Department for Infrastructure. We supplemented that with a promised access to £70 million of RRI borrowing to support NI Water for sewerage and waste water infrastructure. There have been no specific bids made for that. There are legal issues that complicate unfinished estates because of the fact that, if the bond is activated and the Department for Infrastructure does that, it effectively bankrupts the contractor who is involved, and that is a big decision to take. However, people cannot be left for years in substandard housing estates, and, over the course of time, having to wheel their wheelie bins from all the houses out to the front of the road. I know that there are similar estates in my constituency as well.”
“I accept entirely that if we end up in a situation where we are not able to spend the funding available to us, those who have not received funding will be justifiably aggrieved with that situation. That is why I have asked Ministers to prioritise getting funding to those sectors which, for one reason or another, have missed out to date and to try to support other sectors that are very much in need. I have raised that at Executive meetings. I am writing to Ministers to reaffirm that and to encourage them to come forward with schemes. I am expecting to hear from Ministers over the course of the week so that we can take some decisions at Thursday's Executive meeting. I intend to keep the pressure on over the next couple of weeks to try to get that sorted.”
“I understand from conversations with private interests that some support was offered to the Department of Education to help with communication and broadband improvement in homes where young people were having difficulty, but I am not certain if that offer has been taken up. I intend to raise that with the Minister of Education. <BR /> <BR />My own Department is starting to look at a scheme to provide IT support, not to the school population but to vulnerable people generally, and there is a significant uptake on that. It is worth doing because, as the Member says, the experience through this pandemic is one where communication has become a real challenge for many school-age people and also vulnerable people at home. Any bids for support for that would be looked at very favourably by the Executive.”
“I think that that is a good idea. There have been particular challenges. If you speak to anybody in the education field, they will tell you about students who do not have access to Wi-Fi — that affects a lot of rural areas, including the one that I represent, where there are communication issues and our communication infrastructure is not the same as it would be in urban areas. The poorer students in particular have difficulty in accessing the right type of equipment and, as a consequence of that, they suffer more from the closure of schools than those who do have access to such things.”
“I acknowledge that all Departments had their budget to spend and, on top of that, had £3 billion additional to spend collectively. While that is a welcome challenge, it presents problems, particularly during a pandemic, when staff are working from home and there are communication issues. There have been challenges in all Departments in spending the money, but we have allocated according to what, the Executive agreed, were the priorities at any given time, and we now want to see Departments acting with urgency over the next number of weeks to get schemes out.”
“As the Member knows, because he has been here a long time too, I only make recommendations to the Executive, and they approve the funding allocations. The Executive can amend and change any funding proposition that I bring to them. When it comes out the other end and I make a statement, as I am doing today, it is on the basis of Executive approval for the allocations. If a Department had not got sufficient money, that would not have slowed down the scheme, although it might have reduced the amount that it was paying out. The support has been added to since, and I encourage that money to be got out. <BR /> <BR />I am responsible for the schemes that my Department administered, and there were difficulties with them as well.”
“I am fairly sure that it is not within the remit of the Welsh Finance Minister do so either. She may have announced the allocation of the money, but the bid will have come from the Department that has responsibility for students in Wales. Similarly, I am happy to look at bids from the Department for the Economy for students.”
“I am not surprised that the Welsh Finance Minister announced the allocation, but I am sure that she did not bid for it or devise the scheme. Although I do not know the Welsh system intimately, the Finance Minister does not deal with students. She will accept a bid and make an announcement on the funding that is allocated towards it. <BR /> <BR />As I said in answer to my colleague's question, it is a matter for the Minister for the Economy. I have urged her, in recognition of the particular problems that they face, to bring forward a bid for further support for students. I would look very favourably on such a bid and make a recommendation to the Executive, but I cannot go into the Department for the Economy and devise a programme for students; it would not be within my remit to do so.”
“Yes, I certainly would. I live in south Armagh, where the roads are equally bad. I know that officials were in front of the Infrastructure Committee, and they seemed to indicate that there were capacity issues about getting money out on the ground and spent on road maintenance, resurfacing and all the other things that Roads Service traditionally does in the first couple of months of the new year, which is the end of the financial year. There was a discussion, and I think that the Minister indicated that she had received sufficient money over the year and did not require any further money for roads. That matter will have to be taken up with the Department for Infrastructure. However, if further bids were to come in, of course I would look favourably on them.”
“We addressed some of the issues with the Department for the Economy about ring-fenced money and flexibility. We pressed the Department hard to try to at least do some portion of the voucher scheme in this financial year in order to spend some of the money, but it was not possible. If the Department had come forward with any ideas on how to spend out any of that money, we would absolutely have supported it, and we gave them flexibility on other COVID money. <BR /> <BR />We will continue to press Treasury because, while we have money to spend this year that has come very late in the financial year, we have a real challenge next year as we have a poor Budget settlement. The more flexibility that we can get from Treasury to carry over into the new financial year, the more pressures that can ease in Departments next year.”
“I made the point to Mr Frew that I have no doubt that there are capacity issues in the Health Department in dealing with more than one thing at once, which is a consequence of years of austerity policies.”
“I am very sympathetic to that idea. It has been discussed at the Executive, and I know that the Health Minister is looking closely at a proposition. I think that he has the resources in his Department to do that. At the last Executive meeting, I spoke to him about the matter, because there is broad support across the Executive for it. I hope to see proposals coming forward in the not-too-distant future. <BR /> <BR />I apologise: I neglected to answer Mr Givan's last question about the Health Department. I cannot direct the Health Department on what to do. Others will have to raise issues with the Health Minister. It is part of the rules for our Departments that Ministers have autonomy, which is a good thing in many respects. It will be up to the Health Department to bring forward propositions.”
“I have asked the Economy Minister to come forward with a scheme, because that sector has definitely missed out. I hope that attention will be drawn to the issue this week, because there is a small number of sectors that, for one reason or another, have missed out. Travel agents are certainly one of them, and I have every sympathy for finding support for them.”
“In order to ensure that there is, if you like, a one-stop shop for sports organisations, the Department for Communities handles that and will allocate according to lost income, including from hospitality. <BR /> <BR />I have every sympathy with travel agents. I have met them and have asked my officials to work with them in the absence of any other Department standing up to do so. It is not our responsibility, but I have asked my officials to work with travel agents to gather up information. The difficulty is that we have only one paying-out agency — the LPS — which is actually a rate collection agency that repurposed itself. A strong proportion of those people do not operate from a premises; they operate from their houses and online, so they do not have a premises to which we can attach a payment.”
“On the Member's general point, I will say that I am leading the response in the Executive. At the last number of Executive meetings, I have spoken at length about the need for all Ministers to get their Departments going and get that money allocated. I have spoken about the need to give priority to people who have not received support before. <BR /> <BR />Funding is available to the sport sector through the Department for Communities that takes into account loss of income and revenue, including from hospitality. The difficulty for LPS is that the hospitality side of a sports complex or whatever it is, whether it is a soccer ground, a Gaelic ground or a rugby ground, is often a very small part of it and is not independently rated from the rest. There is a problem there.”
“For instance, some businesses were above the threshold earlier in the year for the £10,000 and £25,000 grants and could not avail themselves of them. They continue to struggle. We may look at that area. I assure the Member that we will do all that we can to get support out where it is needed.”
“We are now into a much more extended period of lockdown, and some are suggesting — certainly, the Health Minister suggested in his last public commentary on the issue — that, with regard to where he has now brought us with the recommendation of lockdown until March, we could even be looking at the other side of Easter. There will need to be sufficient funds to continue to roll out the payments that we have already established with the schemes, so the ability to make a one-off higher-level payment for that is restricted. <BR /> <BR />We are looking at it, however. This morning, I engaged with senior officials in the Department to look at where we could get support out to businesses through the information that has been gathered over the year by Land and Property Services (LPS) in the work that it has done with a variety of businesses.”
“I am sure that Ministers intended, with all good intent, to spend the money that they had. Some of the funding that they got was demand-led. I know that, in particular, we were expecting significant demand for support from, for instance, the non-essential retail sector pre-Christmas that did not actually materialise. We cannot go out there and force businesses to apply to schemes. We make an assumption. Similarly, I am sure that, with Communities, there were things that did not materialise in the way that it anticipated. Nonetheless, that leaves us with a significant problem that we have to address. <BR /> <BR />We have sufficient funds for the LRSS and the Economy scheme.”
“What we have and are dealing with now are returns from Departments that bid for funding and said, "Give us that money. We can spend it on x, y and z schemes". They have now returned that money to us. That is the difficulty that we face; it is not a lack of allocation of money over that period of time, even though it came to us with no forewarning or ability to plan out what was available to us over the year. Had we been told at the start of the financial year, as we entered the pandemic, that we would get £3 billion over the year, I am sure that the Executive could have put together a plan to spend it out. We never had any notice of what the total amount would be, yet we managed to allocate it all. What we are now dealing with is money that has been returned from Departments' allocations that they have not spent.”
“In October, we had allocated all the money available to us. In November, we received an additional £400 million, and we allocated all of that.”
“I am a fan of Pink Floyd and have listened to 'The Dark Side of the Moon', but I cannot recall that lyric; obviously, I have not listened to it enough. <BR /> <BR />I will say — the Member knows this because he has been in for every statement that I have made on COVID allocations — that, over the course of the year, we have received funds with literally maybe two days' notice. We did all the allocations in October and then received a further £400 million in November. We then received a further £200 million in December. Doing any financial planning on how we were to spend out all of that was impossible, because we never had any advance notice of the totality of what we were receiving. When we received some funds at the end of the summer, in my recollection, we were told that that was it for the year.”
“Quite what it is intended to address will, I suppose, be a matter for the Department for the Economy, but I encourage it to talk to student organisations and to get some advice from them on where the pressures are most felt by students at this time and to make sure that it applies sufficient resource to try to address that.”
“I concur with the Member entirely on the difficulties that students have faced. Many people, I suppose, like the rest of us, not knowing the course that the pandemic would take, undertook contracts for the rental of property that they were then not able to use. Their ability to attend courses and to get the adequate level of tuition that they would have expected in normal circumstances has obviously been much restricted. As a consequence, hardship among students has grown, and there is evidence of that. <BR /> <BR />I have said to the Economy Minister that students is one area where her Department should try to identify some additional support. I think that she is intent on doing that, so I look forward to some bid from her.”
“I have to say, though, that my general experience is that the Department of Health has been so under-resourced for many years that its ability to do too many things at one time is severely restricted because the capacity is not is there. That is the consequence of years and years of austerity cuts to the Health Department; it is not a consequence just of this year. The Health Department struggles every year with winter pressures, and, this year, it has a pandemic on top of that. The ability to concentrate on other areas such as waiting lists and things like that has, I have no doubt, been challenging, but the Health Minister could explain all of that better.”
“I have asked them to prioritise sectors in their remit that have not yet received funding for whatever reason. Some schemes are difficult to put together. The verification of who is in various sectors and how much they have earned or lost and all those things is challenging, but I have asked people to prioritise those who have not yet received any support, because they would be most aggrieved if we ended up with some returned money at the end of the financial year. <BR /> <BR />In relation to the Health Department, it will be up to the Minister of Health to explain where the £90 million was surrendered from.”
“In relation to people who have not yet received support, I have urged all Ministers to come forward with propositions for spending the money. As I said at the beginning of my statement, in November, we had allocated all the COVID money available to us. It was not a question of sitting on this pot and then running out of time at the end of the year. We had allocated all of it bar £150 million that we were carrying over for rates relief for next year, which was widely requested by the business community, and £26 million was held in reserve. We actually had a concern that we had left ourselves short if we were to end up in a situation post Christmas — the situation that we are now in — of an extended lockdown. <BR /> <BR />I have asked Ministers to bring forward propositions to assist in spending this out.”
“I have no wish to extend this, but the flexibility that people have in working from home and being able to make family arrangements perhaps does lead to a reduction in sick leave where people may be obliged to take that to meet other family pressures. I think that we will be into different ways of working when we come out the other side of the pandemic, and, hopefully, they will be better ways of working that are more productive for our staff all round.”
“I do not know whether it points to any bigger problem across other Departments, but we can certainly make enquiries. <BR /> <BR />The annual leave accrual costs were costs for which people had set aside COVID money but which were then met by Treasury. A range of costs have been met by Treasury, amounting to some £60 million, I think, which meant that that money was back in the pot for disbursal as part of COVID, which added to our pot. There was a reduction in the cost of that, and some of the costs were met by Treasury. Whether that coincides with the sick leave issue, I do not know; we will have to analyse that. There has been a reduction in sick leave over the year; perhaps that points to a way of working, going forward.”
“We, alongside Wales and Scotland, which face similar issues in dealing with their COVID allocations, are pressing Treasury for flexibility to carry over more. We have, I suppose, some degree of assurance in terms of the £200 million that we received very late in the year, just prior to Christmas. The more of the available money that we can carry over into the next financial year, the better for us because we will face significant pressures next year. The question of discretion in how that is spent is something that we will have to bottom out with Treasury once we get the flexibility explored. I expect to hear something from the Treasury this week, and I can advise the Assembly once I do. <BR /> <BR />The ICT issue that I referred to in the statement related specifically to the Department of Health.”
“I will deal with them as briefly as I can. <BR /> <BR />The first was whether we would have a further monitoring round. As I advised him — of course, it is a matter for the Executive to agree — my intention, given the amount of money that we need to spend before the end of the financial year and the shortness of time, is that we allocate as schemes come in rather than corralling them into a single statement. However, there may be an opportunity at various stages to make additional statements, which he asked about. I do not anticipate another monitoring round, but I anticipate keeping the Assembly and the Finance Committee, in particular, advised, obviously with Executive approval, on spending over the next number of weeks. <BR /> <BR />The Member asked about the carry-over of funds.”
“I thank the Chairman for his range of questions”
“In addition, alongside the Scottish and Welsh Finance Ministers, I have requested increased flexibility to carry forward COVID-19 funding, and I expect a response from the Treasury shortly.”
“<BR /> <BR />In order to ensure transparency, the funding provided for the COVID-19 response, and that from the Executive's existing funds, has been separately identified. However, it is the overall financial position that should ultimately be considered. After meeting all the Departments' bids and taking COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 funding together, there is unallocated funding of £346·4 million in resource DEL, £28·3 million in capital DEL, and £55·7 million in financial transactions capital. <BR /> <BR />I encourage my Executive colleagues to utilise the funding available in this financial year. A number of significant proposals have already been identified, which the Executive will consider later this week.”
“Departments have bid for £98·2 million in resource DEL and £24·2 million in capital DEL for non-COVID-19-related pressures. However, some of those pressures have been funded directly by the Treasury, leaving remaining pressures of £58·4 million in resource DEL and £18·1 million in capital DEL. Those bids have been met in full, and the allocations include £9·7 million to the Department for the Economy for higher education quality research and further education colleges' pay remit. Forty-five million pounds has been allocated to the Department for Infrastructure to support the Driver and Vehicle Agency and Translink. Detail of those allocations is shown in the table accompanying this statement.”
“The Department of Education has surrendered £16·2 million in relation to the education end-year flexibility scheme, which is a mechanism to facilitate local management of school budgets. <BR /> <BR />On capital DEL, the majority of the reduced requirements are as a result of project delays but also reflect some additional receipts. The Department of Health has surrendered £19 million as a result of delays in ICT projects. In the Department for the Economy, a reduced requirement has arisen as a result of a £7·8 million repayment of the loan to the Presbyterian Mutual Society. <BR /> <BR />Factoring in changes to centrally held funding, there is £110 million in resource DEL, £46·4 million in capital DEL and £55·7 million in financial transactions capital of non-COVID-19 funding available for allocation in January monitoring.”
“On resource DEL, reduced requirements include £23·8 million declared by the Department of Health; £10·9 million from the Department of Finance, reflecting the anticipated return of rate relief funding from large supermarkets; £8 million declared by the Department for Communities as a result of housing benefit for tenants being lower than forecast and £3·5 million due to delays in recruiting staff for universal credit due to COVID-19. The Executive Office has surrendered £8·3 million in relation to funding for historical institutional abuse, and a total of £9·5 million has been returned by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs and the Food Standards Agency in relation to the Executive funds provided to give certainty ahead of Treasury providing funding related to the Brexit protocol.”
“My Department will receive £101·6 million, including £100 million to extend the localised restrictions support scheme in view of the new restrictions and £0·6 million to provide rate relief for local newspapers, which are a key part of the fabric of our society. The Department for Infrastructure will receive £12·1 million to help address the impact of COVID on that Department. Some £294 million of COVID funding remains available for allocation, and I have asked all Ministers to bring forward proposals for further support as a matter of urgency. <BR /> <BR />In non-COVID spending, Departments have surrendered £93·9 million of resource DEL, £55·7 million of capital DEL and £12 million of financial transactions capital (FTC) during this exercise.”