Ulster Unionist Finance Spokesperson, Philip Smith MLA, has accused the DUP and Sinn Fein of conveniently using the current Executive crisis over the botched RHI scheme as a cover to reveal that the Budget will no longer be presented to the Assembly next week.
Philip Smith said:
“The Finance Minister was due to inform the Assembly next Monday of the Executive’s intended budget allocations for the next 12 months. Instead, he has now chosen to use the attention on the RHI scheme, and the increasingly untenable position of Arlene Foster, as a cover to reveal that the draft Budget is not even ready yet and that it will be the New Year before it is.
“Initially a draft 2017-2020 Budget was meant to be presented to the Assembly in the first week of October. Then the anticipated multi-year budget was pathetically downscaled to a single year budget and was due to be presented in ‘early December’. This was then again pushed back to the 19th December, next Monday.
“Given this is the third time the Executive has missed its own target of producing next year’s Budget, it beggars belief that the Finance Minister has said the Executive have not made enough progress to bring it to the Assembly. It’s yet another example of this Executive failing to operate in any way efficiently or effectively.”