Mark H Durkan.
Foyle SDLP MLA Mark H Durkan has described the draft Budget agreed by the Stormomt Executive as a “bad budget that does not serve the needs of the people.”
Confirming he voted against the Budget, Mr Durkan said the process was “was not open, transparent or strategic.”
He added: “As a result we have ended up with a Budget that will not serve the needs of the people we elected to serve.
“We were rushed into this because of the irresponsible actions of the DUP who negotiated a Treasury loan and locked us into this flawed process.
“The SDLP voted against this draft Budget because we had no choice as the right choices were not made when they should have been.
“We have been plunged into this crisis by continuing financial mismanagement by the Department of Finance and Personnel.
“This draft Budget is an anti-worker budget. There is no escaping the fact that the cuts will result in pay freezes, redundancies and negative impacts on jobs and services all of which will affect the lower paid.
“This budget enshrines regional imbalance rather than addressing it. Failure to ring-fence grants to councils will have a particularly harsh impact on less wealthy council areas – those in the west – but money is being thrown at DETI to create jobs which are usually located in Belfast. At the same time, cuts to the Derating Grant will increase pressure on our many small businesses and result in job losses.
“The SDLP supported putting out the Budget to public consultation as it is vital that the public can examine the detail to see the impact on wages, jobs, and services.
“There are some positives in this Budget that the SDLP would like to see expanded upon including measures that we recommended in previous policy papers such as how Ministers could deal with the budget process more effectively with the use of zero-based budgeting; further investment in infrastructure by the leveraging of additional funding; and further asset sales to raise much needed revenue.
“This Budget could have been better and should have been better. The SDLP believe that had it been negotiated as part of the Talks as planned, we could have made it better by the end of that process.”
Mr Durkan concluded: “It is our hope that the consultation process will serve to improve this bad Budget and evolve it into something that serves the people rather than serving political expediency.”
