This week:
The political lack of budget planning is unacceptable
THE choreography and optics of “Northern Ireland is now open for business” may be helping to restore the ‘market’ and self-confidence in Stormont. Meanwhile, a game which looks like a cross between Chicken, Chess and Monopoly is being played on the hill between ministers all still running their own ministerial independent fiefdoms, and protecting their own share of what is clearly not enough.
Beneath the fanfare, pomp and propaganda, the reality remains.
When a budget is agreed, it will be for one year only, according to the Minister of Finance.
In 2025, Stormont will therefore return to ground zero, and will be “another year older and deeper in debt”.
That means that every publicly-funded organisation, whether funded by Health Trusts, the Educational Authority,
DAERA or any other department or public agency has no agreed annual budget either.
How can effective and efficient services be provided without a clear indication of the resources that will be available to deliver them?
The best that can be done practically is to hold to the strategic plan for now, plan the detail of the first three months’ delivery based on last year’s budget, and calculate a full recovery cost; monitor that monthly, and hope for a budget and income before July 1, knowing that you will most likely have to work within significantly reduced expenditure for the next nine months as a result.
Even if you have a protected budget, inflation will mean you will have to choose between reducing services or acquiring debt!
With only a one-year budget, you cannot effectively plan the level of the reduction of one, or the increase of the other, in the longer term, and effectively mitigate the risk to sustainability of the organisation.
I could be wrong, but I calculate this to be the eighth consecutive year in which those delivering publicly-funded services have been placed in this position.
Stormont and NIO have failed each year to agree a strategic plan for government; devise a timely budget, or have the faintest idea how to secure the resources needed to develop the physical, policy or service delivery infrastructure needed to get us out of the depth of systemic failure we currently endure.
There isn’t a single private; not-forprofit; or charitable company in the jurisdiction that could, or would be allowed to continue to operate on that basis.
It would be almost impossible for them to secure investment, credit, or tender for contracted work, or government grants.
Banks and creditors would long since have forced their hands, and they would be in voluntary administration or bankruptcy proceedings.
But The State is not an incorporated business – it is the administrative infrastructure to