Call for legal advice on Executive budget
Legal advice should be sought in a wrangle over next year’s Executive budget, it was claimed tonight.
The Stormont Assembly is in danger of being bypassed with Finance Minister Nigel Dodds intending to make a statement in January, Declan O’Loan claimed.
The SDLP MLA said he had been raising concern for the last two months that no draft budget would be laid before the House.
“It is unacceptable that the Sinn Féin/DUP regime thinks it can bypass this legislation,” he said.
“After all, the Assembly is the budget’s legal authority and when the SDLP opposed the budget earlier this year we pointed out that it contained many unknowns for the future.”
His proposal at today’s Stormont finance committee meeting that MLAs take legal advice on the budget faced opposition from Sinn Fein and the DUP.
Mr O’Loan added: “The Assembly needs to play its full role in the process and the budget needs to be given due scrutiny and consideration by all the relevant committees and stakeholders.”
A spokesman for the Department of Finance and Personnel said the Executive agreed in March that there would be little merit in conducting a comprehensive budget process this year.
“This was because there will be no UK spending review before 2009/10 and hence no expectation of any substantial additional resources being made available.
“It was agreed that a strategic stocktake would be the most appropriate way of managing the process, avoiding unrealistic expectations that additional services could be funded.”
