Official Report: Tuesday 25 November 2025

Mr Speaker: I received notification yesterday from the nominating officer for Sinn Féin that Cathy Mason has replaced Nicola Brogan as Deputy Chairperson of the Committee for Communities, and Emma Sheerin has replaced Deirdre Hargey as Deputy Chairperson of the Committee for Justice with immediate effect.

Ms Sheerin: Tá Lá Idirnáisiúnta um Dhíothú an Fhoréigin in aghaidh na mBan ann inniu. Ar an drochuair, tá ár sáith taithí againn ar an fhoréigean in aghaidh na mban sa Tuaisceart. Tá an fhadhb chomh forleathan sin gurbh éigean lá aitheantais domhanda a thiomnú di. Rinne na Náisiúin Aontaithe amach díriú ar an fhoréigean in aghaidh na mban agus thug siad tiomantas deireadh a chur leis, agus aird ar leith á tabhairt acu ar mhí-úsáid dhigiteach, agus ba chóir dó sin uchtach a thabhairt dúinn uilig. Tá mé cinnte go dtig le gach duine sa tSeomra tacú leis sin.

I am glad that the focus of this year's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is on online abuse. We will all agree that that conversation is needed. Social media has become a platform for torturing women. That causes emotional harm to every victim, but I argue that the lessons that it teaches our young people are even more harmful in the long term. It is not just on social media; it has been mainstreamed. We recently elected a new president in Ireland. In the days following her inauguration, the national broadcaster thought it appropriate to run a piece on what she was wearing. What does that teach the young girls of Ireland? You can literally become president, and, still, all that they will care about is what you look like.

We are teaching our young women that they are lesser and that their value is measured by their appearance, and then online trolls and bullies attack women when they make an effort with their appearance. It is in that context that the abuse of women is allowed to flourish. Women are deemed to be subhuman, lesser, disposable and expendable. That mindset murders women. In the past five and half years, it has murdered 37 women here in the North. Most of those women met their deaths at the hands of someone that they knew, whether it was a partner or an ex-partner. None of those women sat down during a first or second date and accepted terms that would see them killed, but, going by the online commentary, you would think that they had.

Victim blaming is rife on social media as well, and until we deal with that, we will see a continuation of the problem of online bullying, abuse targeted at women and the post-mortems that see them as being responsible for their own deaths. Until we deal with our words, we will keep losing women. That is something that we all need to address.

Mr Brett: The comments yesterday from the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) that it would not be bringing charges against a former Sinn Féin employee for an attack on a portrait at Belfast City Hall have all the hallmarks of yet another republican cover-up and raise serious questions about the accuracy of statements that were made in the House and by Sinn Féin to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

On 22 October 2024, the First Minister said:

The PPS has confirmed that, in an email received from the Sinn Féin Chief Whip, the PSNI was advised of the resignation of that employee as a result of the incident. However, come February 2025, Sinn Féin's rewriting of the past began. I will quote directly from the PPS statement:

Within the space of six months, the Sinn Féin Chief Whip had confirmed that either they were not telling the truth or that the First Minister had misled the House.

The PPS statement also says:

When a group is in receipt of public funding, there is a moral and legal requirement that it cooperates fully with police investigations. It is a very serious matter that that group did not provide a list of attendees to the police. Today, I have tabled a number of questions to the First Minister and deputy First Minister and the Minister for Communities, seeking clarity on the public funding that that organisation has received.

The statement went on to confirm:

We know that Sinn Féin representatives have been unable to identify former employees that have been right in front of them before. They are now claiming that they were unable to identify one of their employees at an event at City Hall.

There is an attempt here by Sinn Féin to cover up the fact that the son of one of its sitting MLAs attacked the portrait of a former Lord Mayor of the city, costing ratepayers of the city £2,500. The truth will come out, and we will ensure that it does.

Ms Egan: 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence begins today. Those 16 days are a reminder that we must maintain momentum in our collective fight to end violence against women and girls once and for all. The theme of the days for 2025 is "#NoExcuse for online abuse" and brings into focus the need for lawmakers, social media companies and other regulatory bodies, including Ofcom, to keep pace with our unwieldy and ever-evolving online world.

The internet can be a fantastic tool for connection, curiosity and learning, but we cannot ignore the data in front of us about the real, tangible dangers that it poses. Research has found that, at a minimum, one in 10 women and girls in Northern Ireland have experienced online violence. Overall, between 2022 and 2023, the amount of deepfake pornography created increased by 464%. Online abuse is now so prevalent in the fabric of our society, and we must take action to prevent it.

The dedication of vital charities and grassroots community groups to building a safer world for all, whether that be through teaching what healthy relationships look like, debunking myths about abuse itself or giving refuge to those in crisis, should be commended. That includes groups that are working in Northern Ireland, such as Nexus, the NSPCC, Hourglass, Women's Aid, the Men's Advisory Project and local women's centres, which are often at the coalface of the problem and see at first hand the needs of women in their communities.

I think about where we were 18 months ago. We now have the strategic framework to coordinate a cross-government approach to gendered violence and a complementary domestic and sexual abuse strategy. Ending violence against women and girls is a key strand of our Programme for Government. We have new data and new funding, including the release of the local and regional change funds. We can still see, however, that Northern Ireland is one of the most dangerous places in western Europe to be a woman. Our femicide rate is deeply distressing, and my thoughts are with all the women who have lost their lives to gendered violence and with their families and loved ones.

Since 2020, 28 women have been violently killed in Northern Ireland. On top of that, the PSNI has reported that there were 29,740 incidents of domestic abuse between 1 July 2024 and June 2025. The actions that I have outlined will have some impacts now, but we are also building towards the future. We cannot lose speed and focus on bringing about a future in which every woman and girl is safe online and in our society.

Dr Aiken: It is now 11 years since the West first turned a blind eye to Putin's aggression against the Ukraine. In February and March 2014, his little green men invaded Crimea. In April of that year, Putin annexed Crimea and increased his military presence in the Donbas, again with minimal response from the West. We have talked of the parallels with the mid-1930s on both sides of the argument, from well-informed observers such as Timothy Snyder, who wrote the seminal history of eastern Europe — his aptly named book 'Bloodlands' — to the rather less informed musings of the current Irish president and of Sinn Féin MEPs such as Maria Walsh, whose Putinesque view of the world is mirrored only by fellow travellers in Iran, North Korea, China and that paragon of democracy, Venezuela.

Either way, the full-scale war in Europe has now reached the point at which both sides have reached a bloodstained stalemate in the bloodlands. It is a war of ferocity and savagery that has received little coverage, as a world obsessed by 60-second storylines and deliberately distracted by antisemitic tropes and wokeism ignores the plight of the Ukraine. That is ironic, because the Ukraine is fighting our wars for us. If Ukraine is forced into capitulation, the Baltic states, Poland and other countries, including us, will be next. We know that because, just as he told us that he would take Ukraine, Putin has told us that he will take his Russia into Europe. An outright liar about many things, he takes a remarkably consistent approach to telling his truth about that.

Right now, a "Peace for our time" moment is being confected. History tells us what happens when the aggressor is appeased. Let us hope that the supportive rhetoric from the vast majority of right-minded nations, particularly those in the European Union that are standing fast, such as the Republic of Ireland, is followed up with resolute action to defend the Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Failure to do so will be catastrophic not just for the citizens of Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Lviv but for all of us. Slava Ukraini.

Ms Hunter: I will talk about the importance of road safety and reflect on the tragedy of the passing of Katya Watson, one of my constituents, who was involved in a road traffic accident outside Ballymena and died on 13 December 2023. She was a beautiful and smart young lady with her whole life ahead of her. She is remembered lovingly by her friends and family. She was a beloved daughter of Eamon and Angelique and loving sister of Gabriella, Francesca and Aurora and twin sister of Lucia.

In just the past number of days, we have, sadly, heard of many road traffic accidents and of pedestrians being killed by a car. I rise today to speak further on how the dangers of our roads cannot be overstated. For example, the A5, which is just one road, has claimed over 50 lives since 2006. In Northern Ireland, particularly in the winter months, we are short on daylight. Drivers navigate many hours in low-light conditions, yet too many travel without their lights on. That is a life-threatening risk. I ask today that the Minister for Infrastructure explores evidence from other jurisdictions that shows that requiring dipped headlights or daytime running lights can meaningfully reduce crashes and save lives. That is a simple, proven high-value safety measure that we should prioritise island-wide, and it is evidenced to save lives in other jurisdictions, such as those in Scandinavia.

I ask the Minister for Infrastructure to liaise closely with our Education Minister to educate teenagers in schools. Crashes do not happen in a vacuum. Public behaviour matters, and we need an all-island road safety campaign pushed out on TV and online that is high-impact and notifies drivers of the importance of being safe on the roads. Locally, we know that we need to implement more speed indicator devices (SIDs). They show drivers their speed in real time and are so important. They are probably one of the most valued tools that we have. They are cheap and quick to deploy, and data from evaluations of them shows that they reduce average speeds and high-speed driving, particularly around schools and rural lanes, where many accidents happen.

With Christmas approaching, there really is no time more urgent than now. Our roads are icy, and, paired with the glaring sun at this time in the season, that makes drivers nervous on the road. We can all speed unintentionally from time to time, and I urge everyone to think twice, particularly in the current weather conditions. I ask the Department for Infrastructure to do everything in its gift to end dangerous driving through speeding. Let us act urgently so that we can honestly say that we did all that we could to prevent another funeral and another family being destroyed and that lives have been saved not just through policy wins but through our shared responsibility.

Mr Boylan: I want to take my time today to highlight homelessness in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area. Like the constituency offices of all MLAs, my office is often contacted by those who are most in need of housing but continue to find themselves grappling with the crisis of housing supply versus overall need. Every time that such a person comes through our office doors, we see the insecurity and indignity of becoming homeless, which is often not spoken about even though it can have a detrimental and traumatic effect on those who are impacted.

The Housing Executive's 2025 update for the Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon council area shows that, of a total of 4,148 applications for social housing, 2,760 were lodged by people who are in housing stress. The people who are on housing waiting lists deserve not only a home but the correct support in the here and now. Therefore, I welcome the work of my colleague Colm Gildernew, who intends to introduce a private Member's Bill on homelessness prevention. Extending the time for which the Housing Executive should support people is a positive move to ensure that those who are at most risk of becoming homeless are supported.

Not just in Armagh but across the board, everyone recognises the need to build more social and affordable houses, increase the overall supply of homes and work towards tackling homelessness and supporting those who rely on temporary accommodation. As the Minister responsible for housing, the Communities Minister must step up to deliver more social and affordable homes. My party colleagues and I will continue to work with our local Housing Executive staff, housing associations, others across the Assembly and the Executive to ensure that we see the delivery of the housing supply that is needed, including in Newry and Armagh.

Mr Kingston: Yesterday, the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) took the unusual step of issuing a lengthy statement explaining its decision not to proceed with the prosecution of the individual who was interviewed in connection with the damage to the portrait of former lord mayor Lord Browne at Belfast City Hall.

Let us remind ourselves of the sequence of events. A Sinn Féin spokesperson said in October 2024:

The PPS statement issued yesterday reminds us that, also on 21 October:

and that the PPS and the PSNI were working to establish the evidence of what occurred. The statement adds that, because of a lack of evidence, it did not progress to prosecution. There was no CCTV coverage of the attack on the portrait. We are told that the organising group, an Irish language group, failed to provide a list of attendees. There were no eyewitnesses, and the PPS statement states:

It adds:

However, there was not sufficient evidence.

From time to time, events occur that remind us that Sinn Féin is not a normal political party. What other political party would have its member attend an event and engage in a hate crime, and then, when the person decides to say nothing to the police, the party engages in a cover-up? I see Sinn Féin Members smirking and smiling, but those events expose the reality of Sinn Féin. It does not respect the rule of law. It engaged in a cover-up, and that event, like previous events, will continue to haunt it and expose its lack of democracy.

Mr Burrows: On International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women I acknowledge some of the suffering of women across the globe before turning to what is happening in Northern Ireland.

I want to touch on the treatment of Christians in Nigeria at the moment, which gets little news coverage because it does not satisfy an ideology, in contrast with things that happen in the Middle East. We saw, just last week, more than 300 schoolchildren taken hostage, a terrible reminder of the 276 schoolgirls taken hostage by Boko Haram in Chibok in 2014. One hundred of those girls are still missing, and every one of them will have been subjected to sexual violence or will be living in constant fear of it. We never hear of protests, flag waving or emotion here about the plight of women in those countries.

In Afghanistan, there is now an elimination of women from public life. Women are banned from education. Girls over the age of 11 are banned from education. Women are not allowed to teach boys in school, which has resulted in primary-school girls being withdrawn. Some women are not even allowed to have their voices heard in public. There are no protests, no campaigns, no passion, no commentary. If the Afghan cricket team were to come here, there would be no calls for it to be boycotted. It is as if that violence against women and girls does not exist.

In Northern Ireland, we suffer from extremely high levels of violence against women and girls.

I heard Ms Egan outline the progress that has been made, but I just do not recognise that progress. We still have the slowest justice system in the UK, and that is the biggest enabler of domestic and sexual violence, because the perpetrators tactically delay their plea until the very last minute, hoping that the victim drops out because they do not have the emotional resilience to stay in a lengthy process that takes two or three years. However, there is no extra sentence at the end of it. We have the softest justice system. Only today it is in the news that a man who was convicted of three assaults on women in a park in Comber got a £100 fine for each assault. That is what you would get for a parking ticket. What motivation was there for the women to come forward, give evidence and take a day off work? We still have a criminal justice system that always seems to put the perpetrator first and the victim last, which has the greatest impact on our women.

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, I acknowledge the suffering across the globe —

Mr Speaker: Time is up.

Mr Burrows: — and in Northern Ireland.

Mr Gaston: Last week, a concerned parent shared with me their freedom of information response from the Education Authority (EA) on the use of halal meat in our schools. The FOI response shows that neither parents nor even schools have been told that meat served in school canteens may be halal-compliant. The EA admits that it has no tracking, no monitoring and no record-keeping of how much halal meat is being provided to our children. Parents can complain and request alternatives, but how are they meant to complain about something that they have never been told about?

Halal meat may be served in our schools, but the EA does not know how much. It has carried out no consultation, and parents have received no guidance or even been given the courtesy of a warning. Remarkably, when asked what alternatives are available for families who do not accept that method of slaughter, the EA responded:

In other words, "If you do not like halal meat, no problem: there is the salad bar for you". That is simply not good enough.

Traditional halal practices require the animal to be conscious at the moment of slaughter, so, beyond religious objections, there are perfectly legitimate ethical and animal welfare concerns held by many families. There are also those who believe, reasonably, that religious rituals of which they have no part should not determine how their food is prepared, especially in publicly funded schools.

This is not a new dilemma. The apostle Paul addressed Christians in Corinth who were concerned about eating meat associated with religious practices that they rejected. The point that he made was simple: conscience matters, and people should not be forced into practices that violate it. However, there is a difference in this: the Corinthians knew what they were eating, but parents in Northern Ireland simply do not. That is the heart of the matter. Parents should not have to submit an FOI request to find out what their children are being fed. We need transparency, honesty and a system that respects parental choice rather than hiding behind market availability and supply chains. Therefore, I call on the Minister to instruct the EA to introduce clear labelling and full transparency in school menus and ensure that non-halal options are genuinely —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Gaston: — available to our children.

Ms Forsythe: I rise today, on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to share the sentiments of others on this the first day of the global 16 Days of Activism, as we join right across the globe to call for the end to violence against women and girls everywhere. Throughout the campaign, the challenge for all of us is to remind people of the devastating truths of the world in which we live and the tragic real-life stories of victims and survivors, and to take the opportunity, with whatever platform we have, to raise awareness. These are all not just numbers; they are real lives and real families, and often, until it hits close to home, many of us do not appreciate the impact on real communities.

I am chair of the Assembly all-party group on domestic and sexual violence, and we were proud to arrange an exhibition that features artwork created by survivors to support the 16 Days of Activism and is on display currently in the Long Gallery. The exhibition was coordinated by Women's Aid Northern Ireland, and it showcases the artwork of women, children and young people supported by Women's Aid Northern Ireland, reflecting their journeys as survivors and powerfully highlighting the ongoing reality of domestic abuse in Northern Ireland. It is really powerful. The aim of the artwork is to put the campaign here, in the heart of our Government Building, for the duration of that time to raise awareness and encourage all who take time to view it to be inspired to take action against gender-based violence.

Today in the Long Gallery, the All-Ireland Mothers' Union also hosts its exhibition, 'The Souls of our Shoes'. I went this morning, and, again, it is extremely powerful to see the real shoes of real women laid out there, as donated by their families, for those who have suffered or died at the hands of their partners or ex-partners.

Mr Speaker, I thank you also for recognising the importance of this day and hosting an event to further raise awareness.

Ending violence against women and girls is emphasised as a key priority of the Executive, and, by working together, the framework is, thankfully, now in place. However, there is still a long way to go to seriously address the problems in our society. Too many women are being murdered. Today, we remember the victims of the violence. We think of the survivors and those who live with unreported abuse and work hard to cope, and we encourage them to come forward.

As we enter the Christmas season, when tensions at home are often escalated for many, I remember my time working in Belfast and Lisburn Women's Aid and the 'Silent Night, Violent Night' campaigns. I think of all those people through this time and ask everyone to raise awareness, to look out for your neighbours and to stand together strong as women, alongside our male colleagues as a society, in calling for the end of gender-based violence.

Mr Speaker: You have a couple of minutes, Mr Sheehan.

Mr Sheehan: An 29 Samhain, déanann na Náisiúin Aontaithe an Lá Idirnáisiúnta um Dhlúthpháirtíocht le Muintir na Palaistíne a chomóradh. Tugtar deis dúinn an lá sin ár machnamh a dhéanamh ar na huafáis laethúla atá muintir na Palaistíne a fhulaingt: cinedhíothú, glanadh eitneach, forghabháil neamhdhleathach, cinedheighilt, coinneáil agus léigear. Thug mo chomhghleacaithe i Sinn Féin, Emma Sheerin agus Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire, cuairt ar Ramallah le déanaí, áit ar bhuail siad agus ar éist siad le híospartaigh chóras leatromach Iosrael.

Is léir dúinn gur tháinig Netanyahu agus a réimeas salach ar gach bunphrionsabal; tá a gcuid gníomhartha go dubh in éadan chearta an duine agus an dlí idirnáisiúnta. Le breis agus dhá bhliain, lena chogadh cinedhíothaithe i gcoinne mhuintir na Palaistíne, scrios Iosrael Stráice Gaza – áit a n-aithnítear anois mar reilig do leanaí agus don dlí idirnáisiúnta. Cuireann fírinne shaol na bPalaistíneach faoi leatrom Iosrael rogha shimplí roimh an phobal idirnáisiúnta: an seasann muid leis na daoine atá faoi chois nó leis an tíoránach? Anois, níos mó ná riamh, caithfidh feachtas dlúthpháirtíochta idirnáisiúnta maidir le baghcat, dífheistiú agus smachtbhannaí díriú go straitéiseach ar dheireadh a chur le córais leatromacha Iosrael.

Agus muid ag déanamh ár machnaimh ar lá seo na dlúthpháirtíochta, tá focail Terence MacSwiney, iar-Ardmhéara Chathair Chorcaí, thar a bheith oiriúnach dúinn:

Mr Speaker: That brings to a conclusion Members' statements.

Mrs Dillon: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I appreciate your taking the point of order. During Dr Aiken's speech, he made reference to Maria Walsh as a Sinn Féin MEP. To correct the record: Maria Walsh is a Fine Gael MEP and has never represented Sinn Féin. I think that she would appreciate the record being corrected.

Mr Speaker: Thank you for that.

A number of references were made to ending violence against women. I encourage as many of you as possible to attend tomorrow's event. I thought that it was important that, in my role as Speaker, I do something to recognise the violence that there has been against women in our community. I am working with Women's Aid on tomorrow's event. I hope that it will be a significant event at which voices speak out clearly to say, "Enough is enough. We shouldn't tolerate what has been going on". I encourage as many Members as possible to attend that event.

Members should take their ease while we change the Chair.

Mr O'Toole: I beg to move

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour and 30 minutes for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes to propose and 10 minutes to make a winding-up speech. An amendment has been selected and is published on the Marshalled List so the Business Committee has agreed that 15 minutes will be added to the total time for the debate. Matthew , please open the debate.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. This is the final Opposition day of 2025. It comes at a crucial moment, because, within the next 24 hours, the UK Chancellor will announce her Budget. The measures announced will have a huge impact on ordinary citizens, but also on the Executive as they plan for what we hope will be — we say, today, that it must be — the first multi-year Budget in a decade and a half to be released before the end of the year.

We do not want to talk today about simply the dry process of Budget-setting but about why so little trust and faith are placed in our Executive, and in our politics in general, to deliver for people. The reason for that is the failure to take responsibility for making real changes to people's lives. We know — the Finance Minister and I agree on this — that too much power lies in London and that, all too often, that power is not used for the real benefit of people here. We know that the priorities of successive UK Governments have not been aligned to our needs and those of our citizens. We know that what we have in place now does not work. None of that, however, absolves us from using the power that is at our disposal to make real change or, perhaps more importantly, given the day that's in it, to seek new fiscal powers with which to deliver for our people. That has been the stated policy intent of Sinn Féin Finance Ministers for years: they even spent £0·5 million on a Fiscal Commission to make recommendations, but none of those recommendations has been implemented. We know that there was a discussion in the Executive on 6 November, at least, but the Minister and his colleagues have been pathologically cautious about doing anything at all, because it is easier to blame someone else.

Last week, the Finance Minister told the Assembly — after his officials had already told the media — that he hoped to proceed, at some point, with reform of vacant property relief and with some reform of small business rates relief. There was an Opposition proposal on that more than a year ago. We support the Minister's intent, but he offered no detail on when it would happen or even on when the Executive would discuss it. It is well over a year since his predecessor, Caoimhe Archibald, said that she would remove both the cap on domestic rates and the early repayment discount. Again, not only have those things not happened, but they have not even been discussed by the Executive. No finger of blame can be pointed at others, as, under paragraph 24 of the 'Conduct of Executive Business', three Ministers can insist that an item be placed on the Executive agenda. Sinn Féin has four Ministers but, for whatever reason, it has chosen not to use that power.

We do not yet know what will be in tomorrow's Budget. We do know, however, that the handling of the UK Budget has been chaotic. This may be the first time that a British Government have U-turned on a Budget before it was actually delivered. We know that much of that chaos has resulted from the fetishisation of arbitrary fiscal rules, with screeching policy adjustments being required to meet those rules and satisfy bond markets. Those may be dry spreadsheet exercises for officials, but they can have devastating consequences when they are translated into policies that affect benefits recipients or low-income families, who have to live with the reality of having their standard of living and quality of life squeezed in order to satisfy forces that are beyond their control. That is the immoral act of austerity that we talk about so much here.

All Governments should practise responsible fiscal policy, but it is now widely held that making the less well off shoulder the burden of meeting arbitrary fiscal targets is not simply immoral but economically stupid. The term "austerity" has, shamefully, been turned into a cliché by politicians, particularly, it has to be said, by Sinn Féin Ministers, who have trivialised it by using it as an alibi for a bewildering array of delivery failures. That is especially true of the Minister's former Department: Infrastructure. According to responses to questions for written answer, since February 2024, austerity has been responsible for more than 200 small and medium-sized projects not proceeding. It has been responsible for, among other things, the failure to build a park-and-ride in Comber. That was austerity. There is no Ballykelly bypass. That is austerity. There has been no resurfacing of the Crawfordsburn Road in Bangor. That is austerity, too. The Dial-a-Lift community transport service is not working. That is austerity. Just before I got to my feet, I got an answer by email from the Infrastructure Department telling me that a street in Finaghy, which is in my constituency, is not being resurfaced due to — you guessed it — austerity. Apparently, those things are all victims of austerity rather than ministerial choices and priorities. Even amid such austerity, it has apparently still been possible to find well over £10 million since 2020 to subsidise non-existent long-haul flights via zero air passenger duty (APD); a Sammy Wilson policy that the Sinn Féin Economy Minister still stands over.

In the past few days, the Infrastructure Minister has released a social media video, seeking credit for protecting households and workers from water charges. From whom was she protecting them? I am not aware of any party in the Assembly that is actively proposing domestic water charges. The only person who has the legal power to commence water charges is the Infrastructure Minister. Is she protecting households from herself? Of course, she and the Executive more widely are not doing anything on water, as we have seen in today's announcement that the Office for Environmental Protection is launching an investigation into the Minister and her colleague.

Just look at what has not happened with fiscal devolution and the changes to the rating system. Look at the plans — the announced or mooted plans — for a developer levy to fund waste water investment. Nothing has happened. It has been mooted by the current Finance Minister, who was formerly the Infrastructure Minister, but there is no detail and no timescales — just sound bites — as our water system holds back the delivery of affordable homes and new jobs. Sinn Féin wants credit for not doing something that only it can do and is not on the agenda anyway. In reality, it is doing nothing. It is happy to let London or the DUP take the blame while this place struggles. Earlier this month, the Sinn Féin leader of the Opposition in Dáil Éireann said that the Irish Government were a "do-nothing Government". I hear you, Mary Lou. Just wait till you hear what is happening up here. You guessed it: nothing. Talk about it taking one to know one.

Of course, the DUP is often cited as the reason for blocking fiscal devolution. There is no doubt that it has become deeply sceptical of anything that looks like more revenue-raising or fiscal power. To be honest, however, who knows what the DUP actually wants? It hated the previous Tory Government, who shafted it on the protocol after shafting everyone else here on Brexit. It now hates the Labour Government, too. Presumably, it is waiting on the next British Government so that it can hate them, too. It is not so much a case of 'Waiting for Godot' as it is waiting for Nigel, a leader who is so committed to the unionist cause that he will do you an "up the 'Ra" video for the price of a few pints. Apparently, we are content for those people to make decisions about our future.

The case for raising more local revenue and taking more fiscal powers locally has been more than made: it is overwhelming. Apart from the Treasury, the biggest obstacle to doing that is cynicism from a public who have lost all faith in the ability or willingness of local leaders to take responsibility. Madam Principal Deputy Speaker, can you blame them?

It does not have to be that way, however. Despite what the Finance Minister sometimes says, as Opposition, we have published a range of proposals. Indeed, many of those proposals have later been embraced by him and his colleagues; they have just not been enacted. From curtailing vacant property relief to ending the early repayment discount, we proposed those measures and we would support them if they ever came to the Floor. We proposed a levy on big agri-food companies to help to fund the recovery of Lough Neagh and nature restoration. We have called for an innovative use of Executive borrowing powers to help pay for water investment. However, Minister, the clue is in the title: you are the Minister, and we are the Opposition. If you want us to do your job for you, we are happy to do it, but you will have to give us proper access to official costings.

Minister, what powers do you want, and how do you want to take them? Do you agree with the Fiscal Commission that income tax powers should be devolved, as they are in Scotland? If so, do you think that we should have an intermediate tax rate and a higher personal allowance, as they do there?

How do you propose to fund essential investment in waste water infrastructure? That is not an optional treat. A developer levy? Tell us more. An infrastructure bond? Tell us more. You are responsible for answering those questions.

The first ever republican Finance Minister, Michael Collins, managed to raise a bond worth £20 million in today's money, and he did so while operating in secret. Minister, you have hundreds of civil servants working for you, so the questions that I ask are not unreasonable. They are pressing for two reasons. First, there is virtually unanimous agreement in the Chamber that the UK Government cannot be trusted to prioritise our interests. Secondly and more importantly, you and I represent parties that seek to build a new Ireland, which, at its core, is about building something new on the island. It is about taking the power into our own hands and not simply allowing London to do everything for us. It is about not simply blaming others, not demoralising and disempowering people and not insulting their intelligence with drivel and nonsense. It is about treating the people whom we serve with respect as we give them choices now and in the future. We need to empower our people to build something new in the North now and in the new Ireland that we seek to build in the future. Those are our plans, Minister: tell us yours.

Ms Forsythe: I beg to move the following amendment:

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Diane, you have 10 minutes in which to propose the amendment and five minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. All other Members who are called to speak will have five minutes.

Diane, please open the debate on the amendment.

Ms Forsythe: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank the Opposition for tabling the motion. It highlights once again the importance of moving to multi-year Budgets in Northern Ireland. While the leader of the Opposition has put on his last show of 2025, it is a serious issue. The positive impact that multi-year Budgets can have on financial governance here is an important topic.

As we have an agreed Programme for Government (PFG) with agreed shared priorities, it is important that our Budget is set to underpin those and enable the finances to flow in support of them. We all know that having to plan and manage one year at a time, with a hard cut-off at the end of the financial year, drives a different mindset and set of financial behaviours than a Budget spanning a number of years would. At present, Departments have to spend their budget by 31 March each year or lose it to another Department or back to the centre. There is often panicked year-end spending, which is not sensible and is unlikely to deliver the best value for money. It is also not sensible for a funded project to be at risk because of a slip in timing across the financial year for unforeseeable reasons. A one-year Budget does not provide the opportunity for strategic planning, and it creates undue pressure and uncertainty for many services, including our partners in the community and voluntary sector. A multi-year Budget will allow Departments to plan on a longer-term basis. For it to be successful, however, Departments need to transform and cut down on their waste, which is what our amendment emphasises.

In order to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, we need local Ministers to spend every pound and penny wisely. That can happen only when every Department cracks down on waste and when every party in the Executive avoids party political pet projects. That is what this party is about doing. It is not simply about getting more money but about using current resources better. Look at what Minister Lyons is doing in his Department to utilise financial transactions capital (FTC) for intermediate rent in particular. We need to see reform, transformation and efficiency.

We in the DUP are focused on delivering the scrutiny and accountability that people deserve. As a party, we have long said that the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) is in serious need of reform. We have called for modernisation in order to improve public service delivery. There are many hard-working individuals throughout the service who contribute substantially every day to the organisation. There are, however, areas in which Departments lack the right people, skills, know-how and experience to deliver the transformation and major projects that our communities are crying out for. The DUP wants to get to grips with the opportunity to transform public services in order to deliver efficiencies and better value for money. We want to see a review of the high number of quangos and to see some efficiencies realised.

We have highlighted in our amendment how the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report on the delivery of major capital projects shows that the Civil Service lacks the skills and expertise to deliver them. That is something that the NICS must urgently address, alongside developing capacity and capability to deliver major capital projects successfully, without undue delay or preventable soaring costs. With a projected overspend exceeding £3 billion and rising, the need for transformation is urgent. We can look at the eye-watering costs associated with the new regional maternity hospital. The original completion date was December 2015 at a cost of £57·2 million. Ten years later, we still have no new hospital, and the latest estimate for it is £97·1 million. It is appalling that large procurement projects are delivered late and cost so much more than expected. We should not be numb to such a damning indictment.

As regards public procurement, each year in Northern Ireland around 5,000 contracts are awarded by public bodies that, together, are worth between £2 billion and £4 billion. The Northern Ireland Audit Office found that there is little evidence that the board has been effective in providing the strategic direction to ensure that procurement has operated effectively in Northern Ireland. With a history of recurring high-profile procurement failures that diminish stakeholder confidence in public bodies' ability to manage procurement, we need to take steps to ensure that all money spent in the public sector is spent wisely. Household budgets are managed closely to deliver value for money. We need to ensure that the up to £4 billion per year that is spent in the public sector is managed closely too. All Departments face a long list of issues to address, with limited resources and funding to do so. A multi-year Budget can help Departments make long-term plans for transformation.

Finally, our amendment recognises that the UK Budget is due tomorrow. We await the news that will come from it. The multi-year Budgets, which are in draft and to which Departments have contributed, will need to reflect any significant outworkings. Our call is for the multi-year Budget to be delivered as soon as possible so that all that can be captured. Together, we face a significant challenge, and we really need to work together to deliver meaningful multi-year Budgets for the good of everyone who lives and works here. I commend the amendment to the House.

Miss Dolan: It is certainly right that a multi-year Budget will enable better long-term planning and support the sustainability of our public services. While I share the call for it, it should be remembered that it is just one aspect of delivering better front-line services.

For over a decade and a half, our public services have been stripped of resources by successive British Governments who have focused on austerity measures. The Labour Government who were elected last summer have failed to move away from that well-trodden Tory path. One example of that was when the British Chancellor chose in the spring to prioritise investing in militarisation rather than in public services, workers, families and local communities. The community and voluntary sector, which does tremendous work in assisting people to gain skills and enter the workplace, thereby supporting the local economy, was dealt a hammer blow with the loss of EU funding. The initial replacement scheme was, in fact, tens of millions of pounds short of replacing European funding. It has been succeeded by the local growth fund, which, again, fails to recognise our local circumstances, as it is focused more on capital investment than on resources, which are a lifeline for our community and voluntary sector.

Treasury needs to listen to our local organisations and be more flexible to ensure that the funding adequately meets our needs. That is, of course, another unfortunate legacy of Brexit and a clear example of democratic deficit, as local Ministers are not deciding how the funds should be allocated. I acknowledge the work of the current Finance Minister and his predecessor, who, as a result of negotiations with the British Treasury, have secured an extra £1·3 billion for public services here. They have prioritised delivering more money directly from the Treasury for our public services, and they have delivered on that. That is also a recognition by the British Government that we have not been funded to the correct level of need, which has obviously had consequences for our public-service infrastructure. Putting an additional burden on those who can least afford to pay is not the appropriate way to address the current challenges in our public finances. Certainly, there may be other options that can be discussed and considered, but my party will not support measures that put those who are already struggling under even more financial pressure.

As a local Assembly, in recent years we have managed to alleviate some of the harms caused by the British Government that would have worsened existing poverty levels through our welfare mitigation measures. However, due to the limitations of devolution, we continue to be negatively impacted by spending decisions taken in London. I suspect that that is likely to be the case again tomorrow in the autumn Budget.

There are several measures that the British Chancellor could take to support our local economy and ordinary workers and families, such as a reduction in VAT. The disparity in VAT between the North and South is hitting the hospitality sector hard, particularly in border areas that rely on tourism, such as my constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The ending of the two-child benefit cap and the extension of tax-free childcare are also significant interventions that could be made to ease the burden on so many families.

As a republican who believes that political and economic decisions that affect us should be made solely by elected reps here, I also want to see maximum fiscal devolution, and I support the Finance Minister's work in exploring that. Additional powers would provide us with more fiscal levers to deal with economic challenges. However, the barriers posed by partition continue to act as an impediment to achieving our economic potential, which is why there is a growing appetite in all sectors of our communities for discussions about what a new Ireland will look like.

Ms Bradshaw: The motion recognises something that has been obvious for far too long: Northern Ireland cannot continue to run public services on a one-year Budget. The last time we had an agreed multi-year Budget was in 2011-2015. Since then, instability, collapse and short-term allocations have trapped our system in crisis management. The result has been stalled reform of our public services, rising costs and a workforce and public left without certainty. A multi-year Budget is not a luxury; it is a basic foundation for credible planning, fair pay and long-term investment.

If we are serious about long-term stability, we must also be serious about the evidence. Independent analysis from the Fiscal Council and Professor Holtham is unequivocal. Northern Ireland's relative funding is significantly higher than current allocations recognise. The Fiscal Council estimates need at 124%, and there are other estimates ranging from 126% to 132%, with a best estimate of 128%. Delivering on that evidence must be an urgent priority if the Executive are to put public finances on a stable footing. Securing a fiscal floor that reflects real need is not special pleading; it is evidence-based policy, and it strengthens our case for long-term funding certainty. However, we cannot ignore the reality that Treasury declined to engage with that evidence ahead of the recent spending review. That is disappointing, but it cannot be an excuse for inaction here. In fact, it underlines the need for the Executive to be proactive, and any future discussions must not be simply about asking for more but must demonstrate responsibility, reform and a credible multi-year plan.

That brings me to a crucial point. We weaken our negotiating hand if we refuse to address the inefficiencies in how we spend our money. We cannot demand fair funding while continuing to pour resources into duplicated services, for example, in education, into services shaped around division and into structures that pull funding into parallel provision rather than shared outcomes. Transformation, particularly in health and education, is not optional; it is essential if we are to spend our money better. A multi-year Budget gives us the tools to do that, to shift investment towards prevention, to support service redesign and to move away from annual firefighting and short-term thinking. It also gives us the financial flexibility that has been missing for too long, and a greater ability to move capital and resource across financial years would allow us to respond to shocks more effectively.

The motion also raises the question of revenue. The Alliance Party has been clear: we cannot continually demand better services while refusing even to explore how our services are funded. In principle, enhanced fiscal devolution can bring decisions closer to communities, incentivise growth and productivity and allow fiscal policy to align with the social, economic and environmental priorities that are set out in the Programme for Government. We must be honest about context. Households are under pressure; public services are under strain; and costly interventions, such as cutting corporation tax, are not palliative or prudent at this time. Any move towards greater fiscal powers must be grounded in local capacity and administrative readiness, not driven by the Treasury's preferred case.

We will not support the DUP's amendment today, as we feel that removing any reference to devolved fiscal powers negates the need for us to have an honest conversation about how we fund our public services. That said, we fully acknowledge that fiscal powers work only if there is a functioning Executive to use them. Our institutions remain one political crisis from collapse.

We cannot risk having a situation in which powers are devolved but no Government are in place to respond to a downturn. Stability is a precondition for long-term budgeting, not an afterthought.

Any draft multi-year Budget must be a genuinely cross-Executive exercise. Fiscal strategy cannot sit in a departmental silo. Every Minister must contribute, every Department must align with the Programme for Government and every decision must be driven by outcomes, not carve-ups.

Dr Aiken: First, I apologise and correct the record: in my remarks earlier, I should have referred to the Putin apologists Sinn Féin MEPs Lynn Boylan and Kathleen Funchion rather than Maria Walsh. Thank you very much indeed, Linda, for picking that up. I will contact Maria and point out my failure. The point remains, however.

I thank the Finance Minister for his recent remarks about the Health Minister and how the Health Department has managed to find over £400 million of efficiencies. As the Finance Minister pointed out, that is an example to all Departments across Northern Ireland's government about their ability to find the necessary efficiencies that they have to in order to make sure that we have appropriate budgeting as we move forward. As well as setting an example, it delivers a message to other Departments: if our biggest-spending Department, and the one that the Executive and the Programme for Government clearly acknowledge has the most pressures, can achieve those sorts of efficiencies, what are the other Departments doing? Bearing in mind that we are looking at budgeting for what we plan to do over the next three years, it also shows that a degree of foresight and being able to look at your future budgeting plans and how you look towards those things is an appropriate level to do that.

The Health Minister has made it clear that his priority is public-sector pay. Public-sector pay is important because, if you do not have any workers, you will not have a health service, a police service, a prison service or any teachers. It is important that the Health Minister has already identified that he wants to make an early representation of what the public-sector pay award is going to be in the three-year budgeting cycle. All Ministers should commit to doing that. Looking at that and putting public-sector pay first as a benchmark is something that our public-sector workers will think is important: the Northern Ireland Executive are putting them first. It also starts to put a strong fiscal framework on what we are looking at in the next three years.

Having mentioned the fiscal framework, I will talk about the Fiscal Council. In the Minister's remarks when he considers this debate, I wonder whether, when we start looking at the future long-term programmes that there are going to be over the next three years, we can get the Fiscal Council, in some measure, to mark the homework of not just the Executive as a whole but the Departments. One of the things that we need to look at is measures of effectiveness. That is one of the reasons why we will be supporting the amendment. There is a very clear issue: are we getting value for money for public services from the money that we have? It is clear that we are not good at spending money in places. The A5 is an example. It is an absolute disgrace that that road has not already been built. We have spent close to £150 million, maybe more, on the A5 so far, yet not one square metre of tarmac has been laid. What do we say to the people whose friends and family members have lost their lives on that road because of our inefficiency in spending money and being able to do that? I will make a rather sad projection: we will spend much more on administration, legal fees, planning, replanning and judicial reviews before we get to the point of completing it. The cost will probably be closer to, God forbid, £175 million before we do.

We have said this before: we need to spend the money that we have properly. Sooner or later, we will have to have the appropriate debate and come clean to the people of Northern Ireland that we have to raise revenue in some places. Before we do that, we are going to have to show that we can spend the money that we have properly. We need to be able to demonstrate that. That must be fundamental to the three-year budgeting process. Ministers need to say loudly and clearly what their measures of effectiveness will be and how they will determine whether the money is going to be spent effectively. We need to do that and demonstrate to the people of Northern Ireland that we have spent the money that we have properly. If we do not have the money, we need to be in a position where we can say how we will raise the extra revenue or how we will get better at spending the money that we have.

That brings me to the end of my remarks. As a final point, the three-year budgeting process is where we need to be. We will find out a lot more tomorrow, and, hopefully, that will give us a framework to look forward to. Minister, thank you once again for your kind words about the Health Minister. I hope that you are able to say the same thing about other Ministers as we go forward.

Miss Hargey: For too long, our public services have been forced to work within the limits of short-term, uncertain, one-year Budgets that have been handed down by various British Governments. That approach consistently undermines planning, delays essential projects and makes it harder to meet people's needs. Tomorrow, the British Chancellor will announce her autumn Budget, which will have a direct impact on the Executive's finances. The Finance Minister, John O'Dowd, has previously outlined his intention to bring a multi-annual Budget to the Executive after the autumn statement. The spending review that was announced in June set a three-year funding allocation and a four-year capital allocation. That provides us with an opportunity to set the first multi-annual Budget in over a decade.

Sinn Féin has consistently championed multi-year budgeting, as we know that that can lead to better planning and better outcomes for people. Of course, that will still be challenging, as we continue to operate under significant pressures and demands and a legacy of policies at Westminster that drove austerity, divesting from public services, and, of course, Brexit, while offering bailouts to bankers and tax breaks for the super rich and, of course, continuously funding wars. Of course, the Opposition leader does not want us to focus on those, and maybe I would not either if I had worked for the Tory Government during that time.

Notwithstanding those challenges and the policy and fiscal climate in which we operate, there is an opportunity with the introduction of multi-annual Budgets to prioritise, plan and, of course, deliver. Our Sinn Féin Executive team, working with partners, is focused on delivering real and meaningful change. We have blocked water charges, prevented unfair hikes in student fees and prioritised health and cutting waiting lists. Through the 'good jobs' Bill, we will strengthen workers' rights, end zero-hours contracts and deliver secure employment. We will bring forward legislation to help tackle holiday hunger and extend free school meals during the holiday period.

In shaping a responsible, fair and long-term Budget, Sinn Féin has been clear: we need a Budget that supports workers and families, backs our small- and medium-sized businesses and ensures that, if we are ever to have tax increases, the burden should fall on those with the broadest shoulders. We will continue to do all that we can with our stretched Budget. Many of the financial pressures that, we know, people face here come from decisions taken at Westminster. Sinn Féin has been clear and consistent in calling for a reduction in VAT on domestic energy bills to help ease the cost-of-living burden; an end to the two-child tax limit, which pushes families and children into hardship; and a cut to insurance premium tax, which inflates home and car insurance costs. It is clear that, if we are to deliver the strong, fair and accessible public services that people in our communities rightly expect, the Executive must have the proper funding arrangements and the real fiscal levers to do so. Fiscal devolution has to be part of that. If we are serious about managing our finances in a sustainable and responsible way, we need the ability to make decisions here in the interests of the people. That builds on the positive work that Sinn Féin Ministers have delivered.

We established the Fiscal Commission to bring forward key recommendations on fiscal devolution. Our previous Finance Minister, Caoimhe Archibald, brought forward the fiscal framework that, for the first time, recognised and, indeed, funded our Budget on the basis of need. Of course, there is more work to be done in that area. We will continue to stand for workers and families through this period. We will continue to stand for fiscal devolution so that we can do more whilst we plan for the change that is taking place on this island whereby the people here can determine their future. [Inaudible.]

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Sorry? I call Harry Harvey.

Mr O'Toole: On a point of order, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I thought that you were saying something. I was not sure. Go ahead.

Mr O'Toole: It is not in Standing Orders, but I am sure that the Speaker's Office has a view on whether smearing civil servants, who work for every Minister, including the Finance Minister, is appropriate. However, I understand why Members want to do that — to deflect from their own record. A Member who was a Minister previously would not smear her civil servants in the Department for Communities, but she has just done it today. Pathetic.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: You know that that is not a point of order, Matthew, but you have got your concerns on the record.

Mr O'Toole: No problem, yes.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: As with everything in this place, you can go and see the Speaker if you are not happy. I also remind Members that, during the cut and thrust of politics, you need to be respectful. You also need to be correct and accurate on all fronts. OK? Thank you. Without further ado, I return to Harry Harvey.

Mr Harvey: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Multi-year budgeting has long been called for in the House. It would be difficult for anyone to deny the obvious benefits that it would bring to the functioning of government as a whole and of individual Departments. Many points have been eloquently made in the debate, but, for me, the focus must be on transformational reform. Whilst no one should be in any doubt as to the impact that multi-year budgeting would have, there is a tendency to frame the conversation in such a way as to present it as the silver bullet. The importance of other tools that, arguably, are more readily available should not be underestimated.

It does not matter how long the budgetary period is if you fail to implement robust guard rails to ensure that you remain within it. If public procurement and the major capital schemes that have emanated from this place over the past decade can teach us anything, it is that fundamental reality. The York Street interchange, which remains on paper, and the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) maternity hospital, which is already 10 years late and some £40 million over budget, are just two examples of where the system is failing the people of Northern Ireland. Significantly delayed and over-budget capital projects should not be accepted as the norm. They —

Mr Durkan: Will the Member give way?

Mr Harvey: — should be the exception, not the rule.

Mr Durkan: Will the Member give way?

Mr Harvey: The fact that they are the rule points to a serious lack of capacity within our Civil Service. We, as a party, have continually highlighted and sought to address that in recent years.

Mr Durkan: Will the Member give way?

Mr Harvey: Inability and reluctance —.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Excuse me. Sorry, Harry. Mark, he has already indicated that he is not prepared to give way. [Inaudible.]

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I know. Please, be respectful; thank you. Go ahead.

Mr Harvey: Inability and reluctance to avail ourselves of expertise within the Home Civil Service has hampered knowledge-sharing and skills transfer. Programmes within the 'Safeguarding the Union' Command Paper that are designed to facilitate better collaboration and exchange across the UK Civil Service will undoubtedly assist transformation, once implemented. The Procurement Board, which has been tasked with ensuring the effective operation of public procurement, has been unable to achieve what it was commissioned to do. The sheer scale of projects falling outside of their procured targets demonstrates that a rethink is required urgently, if stakeholder confidence is to be regained. The challenges are evident, and multi-year budgeting would undoubtedly play a part in addressing them. In the meantime, efficiencies through reform and transformation will remain our party's focus.

Mr Chambers: The importance and undeniable benefits of moving to a multi-year funding position have often been discussed in the Chamber, and have always been supported by my party. No public service would benefit more from some degree of financial clarity and certainty than our health service. Over the past decade, this reality has become painfully clear: our health service cannot continue to function, never mind transform, under a cycle of short-term Budgets and political instability. If we genuinely want to provide the sustainable, high-quality care that the people of Northern Ireland deserve, the Assembly and the Executive must be prepared to take a long-overdue approach to budgeting.

Year-to-year budgeting has forced the Department of Health and our trusts to operate in constant firefighting mode.

Funding that arrives late in the financial year or that shifts unpredictably with each Budget settlement makes long-term workforce planning virtually impossible.

When Departments find themselves in financial deficit, in-year savings plans are often more difficult and counter-strategic than they would have been had a multi-year approach been taken. Short-term budgeting not only slows progress, it actively costs money. When Departments cannot plan ahead, especially those of the scale and size of the Department of Health, they end up paying more for temporary solutions, such as expensive agency staff instead of permanent recruits, short-notice contracts instead of strategic investments and sticking-plaster fixes instead of long-term reform.

The uncertainty created by year-to-year Budgets directly affects the patient experience. The projects that are designed to modernise care are unavoidably disrupted when the funding stops and starts, whether they are in mental health, where critical investment is needed for in-patient mental health facilities, elective surgery, primary care or digital innovation. Of course, staff morale suffers when they cannot see a reliable path forward for the services that they are trying to improve. The public lose confidence when announcements of progress are repeatedly followed by announcements of delay.

We must also be honest with ourselves about the impact of political instability. The stop-start nature of the Assembly and Executive over the past decade due to collapses of the institutions — first by Sinn Féin and then by the DUP — has compounded every one of the challenges. When the institutions collapse, the strategic direction is in a vacuum, and there is zero accountability for the political governance. As we all know, health is the sector that suffers the most when our politics fail because it relies the most on continuity, long-term planning and stable decision-making. A multi-year Budget will not solve every problem in our health service, but it will provide the foundation on which real solutions can finally be built.

Allowing the Department to plan workforce growth over several years instead of several months will let the trusts invest in improving services with the confidence that the funding will be there to complete the work. Crucially, it will help to ensure that money is spent wisely rather than reactively. As MLAs, we owe it to patients and the wider public to break the cycle of short-termism that is strangling our health service.

Clarity in the budgeting process must go hand-in-hand with stable government. I hope that the Executive can come together in the coming weeks, especially after tomorrow's Budget statement, set their political differences to the side and act in the best interests of the people whom we are elected to serve. Having watched the political positioning of some parties over recent weeks, however, I am becoming increasingly concerned about whether the Executive have the political desire and bravery to fairly consider a multi-year deal. If the Executive Ministers are not able to set their political differences to the side and consider a draft multi-year settlement, it will be another catastrophic failure of this place.

Mr Gaston: At first glance, the motion appears to be shrewd. It was delivered with great gusto by the star performer, Mr O'Toole. In any normal, functioning government, who could oppose long-term planning or financial certainty? All that we have to do, however, is look behind the words in the Order Paper. The real thrust of the motion is a demand that the Executive be armed with new devolved fiscal powers. Normally, Opposition parties highlight the failings of the Government and warn of the dangers of granting them more authority, but, oh no, not our Opposition; Not the SDLP, which yearns for the return of ministerial trappings and is so preoccupied with being constructive that it has still not grasped how to be an Opposition who will finally land a punch. How could anyone outside the Executive look at this failing, divided and self-interested Administration and think, "What those chancers really need is more power"?

Mr O'Toole: I thank the Member for giving way. The upshot of the Member not wanting more devolution here is that he is happy for all that power to be held in London. I have not heard the TUV praise the British Government in a while. Can he tell me the last British Government that he supported or the kind of future British Government that he would support? I am at a loss.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Gaston: I am looking forward to 2029 when we finally get rid of the Labour Party. I will not put all my trust in the next Government. I will have to wait to see what they deliver, but they cannot be any worse than what we have.

Only the other week, the nationalist/republican/Alliance side of the Executive supported a motion of no confidence in the Minister of Education, yet the SDLP wants us to trust the Executive with new fiscal powers. They cannot manage the powers that they already have. Westminster is extraordinarily generous to Northern Ireland, with £1·24 spent here for every £1·00 that is spent in England, yet the Executive still cannot live within their means. Then, of course, the SDLP agrees with the serial wastage here. Oh yes, we needed a Climate Commissioner and an Irish Language Commissioner, with all the legislation and expense that goes with those roles. How did we get by before without either?

We have Ministers who cannot live within the budgets that they have. They routinely overspend, send begging letters to London and blame everyone else but themselves for their failures. Do you know what? I have never heard the Opposition complain about that mentality. We cannot manage the money that we have been given, yet the SDLP is asking that the Executive be given the ability to take more from our hard-working households and businesses. That is some election pitch that the SDLP has made today, because it is essentially what the motion proposes.

The TUV has been absolutely clear. We believe that Northern Ireland should be governed as fully and as integrally as possible within our United Kingdom. It should not be semi-detached, operating a separate economic model and drifting further down the colonial path imposed by the protocol and accepted by the Executive. The more that fiscal powers are devolved to Stormont, the more that Northern Ireland's economy and tax policy diverge from those of Great Britain. We already have to endure a border down the Irish Sea. We already suffer from having a different regulatory regime. Apparently, however, the solution is to give Stormont the ability to operate a different tax regime as well.

As for the idea of having multi-year Budgets, surely evidence needs to be produced that devolution can operate for multi-year periods. I remind the SDLP that the Executive have not functioned for 40% of the time since the sacred text of the Belfast Agreement came down from Mount Sinai. Rather than push for more powers, it is time to recognise that this place is incapable of even existing for the multi-year periods for which the SDLP wants it to budget.

Mr Carroll: It is clear that the current economic and political system is not broken but working exactly as intended. The economic system that we live under was never designed to tackle wealth inequality. It was never designed to tackle record levels of deprivation, which includes, disgracefully, one in three children in my constituency living in child poverty. The current system is unable and unwilling to tackle the ever-increasing cost of food, the price of which is shooting up year-on-year, making it unaffordable for people right across the North. The system that we live under refuses to tackle year-on-year increases in rent, with landlords ripping off tenants while the Executive say, "Fill your boots, lads".

It is clear that we need a different path and a different system in order to meet the needs of not only my community but the wider constituency across the North. As a start, the Executive and the Finance Minister should refuse to engage in the groupthink that is Treasury economics, which considers fiscal prudence and being in the black to be more important than the social consequences of terrible economic decisions.

In recent days, the Finance Minister has referred to the need for revenue raising. I agree with him but have one big caveat. The question that I want to ask him is this: from whom will you, Minister, and the Executive seek to raise money? If you are talking about ending the landlord allowance, which sees millions of pounds going into landlords' pockets every single year, I am with you. If you are talking about reallocating and stopping the £80 million or so for industrial derating, which is, to repeat, a handout to multinational corporations, I am with you. If you are talking about tackling, alongside the Minister for Communities, the hundreds of millions of pounds that are going to landlords to subsidise increased rents, because rents are not capped or reduced, I am with you.

However, if you are talking about kicking working-class people again, we will part ways. I will say, "No, thank you", and we will fight any proposals that do that. Prescription charges are being touted again, and everybody in the House should resist that. Although this Minister has ruled them out, water charges are unconscionable, given that people have been paying for water for decades. That idea will not work, because it will punish people who have already paid for their water. There has been some suggestion about paying for GPs, which is another ludicrous idea that would put more barriers in place for people who are already struggling to get access to their GP to receive healthcare. The current Economy Minister maybe had some flirtation with the idea of increasing university fees, but, thankfully, she backed down after people opposed the idea. That would not only be unfair but would be totally counterproductive.

As other Members said, a multi-year Budget could — I emphasise the word "could" — give some Departments the ability to plan ahead, but the devil will be in the detail of the Budget. If we have stringent single-year Budgets repeated over three or five years, they will still be insufficient. The Executive need to demand, with one voice, a wealth tax. A wealth tax on the richest 2% across these islands could, for a start, bring in £160 billion over several years. Corporation tax needs to be increased rather than reduced, as previous Executive parties agreed to do. If there has been a Damascene conversion on that, I would certainly welcome it, but the Executive need to demand that corporation tax be increased. We need to see an end to the drive to militarisation and the huge increase in spending on war.

In closing, it is worth reminding ourselves that billionaire wealth across these islands has exploded over the past 35 years. In 1990, there were 15 billionaires in Britain, but there are now 156. In the South, we have seen billionaire wealth increase by €13 billion in the past year alone. That is obscene and totally grotesque, and we are long past the time to abolish billionaires. That should be the stated policy of the Executive and all Governments across these islands. Instead of being in awe of and beholden to people who are often described as wealth creators but who are inequality defenders, we need to tackle wealth and abolish billionaires in order to have some fairness and decency in our communities.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The next Member to speak is the Minister of Finance. Minister, you have 15 minutes to respond to the debate.

Mr O'Dowd (The Minister of Finance): Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the motion. Since taking up post as Finance Minister, I have consistently outlined my intention to bring forward a multi-year Budget. As the motion rightly acknowledges, the Chancellor's autumn Budget may have an impact on the Executive's Budget. Therefore, it is only right and proper that I await its outcome before I bring the multi-year Budget to the Executive.

The spending review that was announced in June set out our day-to-day funding for three years and capital allocations for four years, providing us with the opportunity to set the first multi-year Budget in a decade. Multi-year Budgets will shape the future of our public services for years to come. This will be one of the biggest decisions that the Executive and Assembly will make between now and the end of the mandate, and it is important that we get it right.

Agreeing a multi-year Budget in a mandatory coalition will mean that there has to be give and take on all sides. The multi-year Budget will, of course, present challenges, not least because the quantum of funding falls short of what we had hoped for and, in my view, what is needed to provide the public services that our people deserve. We need to be realistic; there is not sufficient funding to do all that we want to do or to provide any Department with the level of funding that it has requested. However, we must also recognise that the multi-year Budget will present opportunities. It will provide Departments with funding certainty, allowing them to plan on a longer-term and more strategic basis, in turn creating the conditions to drive much-needed transformational change in the delivery of our public services. In working towards agreeing a multi-year Budget, we must be guided by our Programme for Government — 'Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most'.

The Executive have shown their commitment to doing what matters most and are working in partnership to deliver for people.

Since I took up the role of Finance Minister, my focus has been on securing a fairer funding model. The leader of the Opposition referred to the first republican Finance Minister, Michael Collins, raising £20 million in today's money: I would never compare myself to Michael Collins, but I can go one better. Between me and the previous Finance Minister, we have raised an additional £1·3 billion for public services here as a direct result of our engagement with the Treasury and our pursuit of a full fiscal framework. I think that the leader of the Opposition, even on this last Opposition day of the calendar year, will acknowledge that £1·3 billion does outmatch £20 million.

Mr Durkan: I thank the Minister — the Big Fella — for giving way. Can the Minister confirm whether the £1·3 billion that was, as he says, "raised" by him and his predecessor came from the source that is inflicting all this austerity on us?

Mr O'Dowd: He is absolutely right: we managed to garner from those who have inflicted austerity — not just this Government but the previous Government — an additional £1·3 billion. I do not see what the problem is with that. Maybe the Member has an ideological opposition to that, and, if he wants to explain that, I am more than happy to listen. The record shows that, through our engagement along with the Executive, public services in this community are £1·3 billion better off.

Through the 2025-26 Budget, the Executive have invested in waiting lists, enabling an additional 122,000 patient interventions to be delivered in the first six months of this financial year, surpassing the Programme for Government target of 70,000. The Executive have invested £55 million in early years and childcare, which includes funding to support families with childcare costs through the childcare subsidy scheme, and they have invested in waste water capacity, contributing to the unlocking of waste water capacity for over 5,000 properties across the North, supporting future housing and wider economic development. Those are just some examples of how the Executive are working together to make improvements to people's lives.

The leader of the Opposition pointed to issues where DFI could not do the work that it wanted to do. Austerity is a real thing, and the reality is that you cannot do as much as you would like to do. However, the Member did not read out the list of programmes and investment that is going on across all Executive Departments and the differences that that makes to people's daily lives. Are we doing everything that we want to do? No, because we cannot. Are we making a difference? Yes, we are.

Despite the financial constraints, much has been delivered, but there is still much to do. It is important that we are honest about the scale of challenges facing us. I have said that many times in the House and around the Executive table. Our finances are significantly constrained, particularly in 2026-27, as the biggest uplifts in day-to-day spending power occur in later years. With demand for services outpacing the funding available, continuing to do what we have always done is not an option.

Transformation and innovation are essential to driving productivity and ensuring that public-sector pay remains affordable and sustainable throughout the Budget period. Each Minister must strive to improve efficiency in how our public services are delivered. I know that change is difficult, but we have to do things differently if we are to change our public services for the better. That means embracing technology, it means embracing new ideas and it means embracing looking at areas where we can raise additional finances. No, I am not promoting kicking the working class. I have been in the Executive in one form or another over the past 15 years, and nowhere in the decisions that I have made have I been accused of kicking the working class.

Mr Carroll: I appreciate the Minister's giving way. I agree with him on water charges, but can he expand on other aspects of revenue raising? I think that he said in recent days that he would look at that again. What is he proposing that we do to raise revenue?

Mr O'Dowd: It is worth noting that the Executive already raise somewhere in the region of £1·6 billion through their rates policy. All of the rates policies are open to review, including the one that the Member referred to: rates relief for manufacturing and for other types of businesses in that field. All of those will be reviewed in the next year or so, and Members will have an opportunity to contribute towards that.

When I talk about revenue raising, I also add that that should be done in a fair and equitable way. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the burden of any further increases across the board, particularly any announcements coming from Westminster on tax rises. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear that. There are other ways as well. Last week, I set out proposals in the House that have the power to raise an additional £9 million through the rating system. Those positive and progressive changes could see savings redirected to provide additional support to small and medium-sized businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. Those proposals are not seeking additional funding; instead, they are focused on better using what we have. I encourage other Ministers to do likewise.

Mr Aiken referred to my comments about Mr Nesbitt. One of the difficulties of complimenting a Minister from a different party is that somebody will remind you about it. [Laughter.]

However, when Ministers act cooperatively, particularly in engagement with me and my officials, that is worth acknowledging. All Ministers face challenges, but, if we work in a collaborative and partnership way, we will be able to move through those challenges and secure our front-line public services. That has to be done in cooperation.

Turning to fiscal powers, it is vital that the Executive have the funding arrangements and fiscal levers necessary to deliver the public services that our citizens rightly expect and deserve. Mr O'Toole seems to believe that there is some sort of delay or stalling here, but there has been a programme of work to get us to the point where I want us to be and where I need to convince Executive colleagues that we need to travel to. Engagement with the Treasury thus far has been on our level of need. We have had success in relation to our level of need, and, as part of those negotiations, I got agreement from the British Government to continue discussions on a full fiscal framework. Part of that full fiscal framework is discussions around fiscal devolution. That engagement has started. It will intensify after the Chancellor announces the Budget.

It would be fair to say that the Treasury goes into lockdown about six weeks before a Budget because of the intensity of the work involved, and I have to understand that. However, I have asked my officials, once the Budget is announced, to increase their engagement with officials in the Treasury on full fiscal devolution on the basis of the findings of the Fiscal Commission. My Department will lead those negotiations. I will have to go back to the Executive with recommendations, and that will require Executive engagement and discussion on the way forward. Progressing that important work will require the agreement of the Executive and the British Government. In Scotland and Wales, that process took a number of years to complete. We can learn valuable lessons from their experiences to help to expedite the process, but it will take time. I want to make progress as quickly as possible whilst ensuring that we get the approach that meets the needs of workers, families and businesses here.

Following the Chancellor's autumn Budget tomorrow, I will put forward a multi-year Budget for consideration and agreement by the Executive early next month. Once agreed by the Executive, the multi-year Budget will go out to consultation. That will be an opportunity for everyone to have their say and help us to shape the final Budget and the future of our public services for years to come. As I outlined, the need for transformation and embracing new methods of service delivery has never been clearer. That will require a willingness from all of us across the Executive, the Assembly and society to embrace change. Like all of you, I want to see our funding used for what matters most. We must work together in true partnership to confront our challenges and seize the opportunity that a multi-year Budget gives to create lasting, positive change.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Minister. I call Brian Kingston to make a winding-up speech on the amendment.

Brian, you have five minutes.

Mr Kingston: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. In our amendment, we welcome the forthcoming multi-year Budget for the Northern Ireland Executive for three years and four years' capital. We await with great interest the Budget announcements by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, tomorrow.

The leader of the Opposition asked what the DUP wants: the DUP will stand up for the people of Northern Ireland. We will both work with and challenge every Government at Westminster in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland. Indeed, it was our party leader, Gavin Robinson, who led the challenge to increase the fiscal floor for Northern Ireland by an extra 24% for every pound spent in GB.

Mr O'Toole: Will the Member give way?

Mr Kingston: Do I get an extra minute, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker?

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Yes.

Mr Kingston: OK. I will give way.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you for giving way, and well done for ensuring that you get the extra minute. The Member talks about challenging UK Governments and says that that is what your MP Gavin Robinson is doing, etc: fair enough. Does that not mean that, ergo, it would be better for us to take more power here? If London is not to be trusted and you need to stand up, why do we not just take more power here and do it ourselves?

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Kingston: I will come on to what we can do here ourselves and how we can bring more efficiencies.

Diane Forsythe, in proposing the DUP amendment, highlighted the importance of the Budget supporting the agreed Programme for Government and how, previously, with the 12-month Budgets, pressure to spend money within one financial year was hampering delivery and resulting in a rush to spend moneys at the end of the year. There will now be the ability to plan across multiple years, and that should improve efficiency and delivery.

Our amendment focuses on the need for transformations. We think that the answer should not automatically be to tax people in Northern Ireland more and squeeze more money out of hard-pressed families and people who are struggling to make ends meet. We think that more can be done to bring about efficiencies, and the focus should be on reducing waste and carrying out reform that leads to efficiencies.

Whilst there are many people working hard and efficiently in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, it has a poor record on major capital projects, and we have given examples of that. A 2024 Audit Office report said that only one out of seven flagship infrastructure projects identified in 2015 had been completed, and a second of the seven was completed by the time of the Public Accounts Committee report. That means that five were not completed.

We note that the Northern Ireland Civil Service is different from its counterparts in Scotland and Wales. Whereas the Civil Services in Scotland and Wales remain part of the UK Home Civil Service, the Northern Ireland Civil Service is a stand-alone body and, as a result, has been unable and, at times, unwilling to benefit from economies of scale in terms of skills present in the public sector in Great Britain. The DUP sought to tackle that during our negotiations with the Government, and the 'Safeguarding the Union' Command Paper sets out a programme for skills exchange between the Northern Ireland Civil Service and the UK Home Civil Service. Encouraging those secondments and movements across all parts of the UK will boost capacity and help to bring specific expertise to projects, where necessary. The DUP will seek the faithful implementation of those schemes, the expansion of short-term placements and the recruitment of more external experts to achieve better outcomes in our Civil Service. Northern Ireland is well placed to benefit from greater integration with the Home Civil Service.

Jemma Dolan and the Minister pointed to the extra £1·3 billion that, the Minister says, he has secured from His Majesty's Treasury. That highlights that our annual subvention from His Majesty's Treasury is over £19 billion, so, while Members rightly point out the effects of austerity, we would do well to remember that we benefit from being part of a country — the United Kingdom — that has the sixth-largest economy in the world. Our prosperity is based on that. Let us never forget that, but let us also remember that there is a national challenge to our country's finances. National debt is currently at around £2·6 trillion.

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr Kingston: No, I will not have time.

That figure has increased under the current Labour Government. We cannot be blind to the wider financial realities, but we in the DUP will work with every Government. Our well-being is based on being a large economy, not on being a tax haven for wealthy multinationals.

Steve Aiken showed how the Health Minister had found savings of hundreds of millions of pounds, not least by reducing the high spend on locum doctors. We recognise that that is an example of looking for savings, but, of course, the Minister's Department has shortcomings in capital projects, and, as my colleague Harry Harvey pointed out, the new regional maternity hospital is £40 million over budget and many years late.

There is much more to be done. We thank the Members who have indicated support for our amendment and commend it to the House.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The last Member to speak is Sinéad McLaughlin, who will conclude and wind-up the debate.

Sinéad, you have 10 minutes.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank all those who contributed to the debate.

Northern Ireland deserves a Government who plan ahead, not one that stumbles from one financial year to the next. That is really what the motion is about. For far too long, our public services have been trapped in a system that offers no stability, no long-term direction and no sense of strategic purpose. When schools cannot plan their staffing, when health trusts do not know what they can afford beyond a few months and when universities warn of financial strain and uncertainty, it is obvious that the way in which we budget is part of the problem. Operating a single-year Budget process forces Departments into short-term thinking; prevents them from investing early in reforms that would save them money in the long run; limits their ability to redesign services in a way that works for people; and creates a culture of firefighting instead of planning. A multi-year Budget will not fix everything, certainly not overnight, but it will provide certainty that will allow Departments and the people who work in them to make sensible, responsible decisions. It will give space for innovation, forward planning, strategic investment and the reform that, we all know, this place desperately needs.

We cannot talk about long-term planning without acknowledging the instability at the heart of the institutions. Budgets, strategies and priorities are meaningless if there is no functioning Executive in place to implement them. Our public services have endured repeated collapses of government, some lasting years. During those periods, nothing progresses, consequences pile up and problems deepen. Services do not pause because Stormont has paused. Children waiting for assessments do not pause. Families struggling with childcare costs do not pause. Hospitals, schools and community organisations do not pause. When the Executive collapse, the public — our people; our constituents — pay the price. If we want a system that is capable of delivering a multi-year Budget, we need institutions that cannot be switched off when political disagreements arise. The structures of government must be resilient enough to withstand political turbulence. That requires serious institutional reform, because reliable budgeting depends on reliable governance — without both, progress is impossible.

A long-term Budget must also align with the Programme for Government. For too long, we have had promises on paper with no stable financial plan behind them. The result is predictable: ambitions fade when budgets tighten, and commitments fall away, because there was never any serious, realistic plan to fund them.

Minister, I get really frustrated that, each time we ask about budgets, the response is the same: if the money is not there, it is because of the Brits, and, if the money is there, it is because of you, Minister, or Sinn Féin. I will give you an example. I recently asked the Infrastructure Minister about moss on pavements in my constituency. Her answer was that it was the fault of British austerity. That is just bonkers. It is childish. We cannot keep on doing that. We have responsibilities in government.

Consider childcare. Northern Ireland has the highest childcare costs across these islands. Families feel that pressure every week. For years, the SDLP has called for proper investment to make childcare genuinely affordable. Yet, when childcare Barnett consequentials were available, they were not protected. That decision set us back significantly. Had those funds been ring-fenced, we would be building a childcare system that supports families; strengthens the economy; and helps to tackle poverty, including child poverty, in our constituencies. Instead, we remain playing catch-up, and families pay the price.

That is why the SDLP has taken matters into its own hands. While the Executive have continued to drift from crisis to crisis, we have been doing the serious work on policy that they should be doing. We have published detailed papers on childcare, our future relationship with Europe, the reform of housing and the arts. We have even published an alternative Programme for Government. We are credibly outlining how we would do things differently. We are not just pointing out what is wrong; we are setting out fully formed proposals on how to fix things. We are not just sitting in the corner and getting clicks on TikTok like Mr Gaston.

The higher education and skills sector faces the same short-term pressures. Universities and FE colleges have been pushed to their limits. Earlier this year, the possibility of increasing tuition fees emerged, a clear sign of how strained the system has become. We challenged that because pushing down on students would damage opportunity and our economic future. Without a stable, multi-year funding model, the underlying pressures will simply return again and again. Skills cannot be developed on guesswork; research cannot grow without certainty; and employers cannot plan when the pipeline of talent is at risk. Economic growth depends on having a skilled workforce, and that depends on sustained investment.

Mr Kearney: Will the Member give way?

Ms McLaughlin: Yes, go ahead.

Mr Kearney: Does the Member recognise that British military expenditure, which is currently in excess of £60 billion and will rise to £73·5 billion by 2028, has direct repercussions for the ability to deliver services for workers and families across the British state and in the North?

Ms McLaughlin: The Member knows where I stand on defence spending, particularly if state money in Northern Ireland is being spent on genocide and the weapons of genocide. I will leave it at that.

Regional balance is another area where year-to-year budgeting does real harm. Communities in the north-west and other areas in which there are long-standing economic challenges know exactly what it feels like to be promised progress that never materialises. Investment comes in short bursts; projects start and stop; and long-term commitments evaporate when budgets tighten. A fair and balanced economic model requires sustained investment over many years, not one-off announcements or short-lived cycles. If we are prepared to press Westminster for needs-based funding for Northern Ireland, we must apply the same logic to our borders and invest in the regions that have been neglected. Regions that have been overlooked for decades deserve a long-term plan that does not shift with political tides or depend on the flavour of Minister.

If we are to support better budgeting, we need better financial oversight. The SDLP has called consistently for the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council to be placed on a statutory footing. When oversight is optional, accountability is also optional, and it weakens. A statutory Fiscal Council would provide transparent, independent scrutiny to ensure that financial decisions are evidence-based, long-term and not driven by short-term politics.

We must also be honest about revenue. Northern Ireland cannot expect its services to improve if it refuses to explore the fiscal tools available to other devolved Governments. Scotland and Wales have already taken on additional fiscal powers. Meanwhile, we continue to rely almost entirely on the block grant, even as demand rises and pressure intensifies. We constantly criticise Britain, but we do not put any other plans in place to take responsibility. We must, therefore, like the way in which Britain throws us the money. A multi-year Budget must at least open the conversation on new fiscal powers, not to raise taxes for the sake of it but to ensure that we have the tools to protect essential services. That is why we will vote against the DUP amendment. It would water down the intent of our motion and remove any reference to the need for a greater devolution of fiscal powers.

If we are serious about building a sustainable future for Northern Ireland, we cannot simply avoid the difficult conversation. A motion about long-term budgeting means little if we strip out the tools that are required to make it work. Ultimately, the motion is about changing direction. Our public services cannot survive in a system defined by volatility, instability and short-term thinking.

Let me be clear: if the Executive want credible scrutiny and credible alternatives, they must empower the Opposition to deliver them. The SDLP —

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Time is up, Sinéad.

Ms McLaughlin: — is doing the heavy lifting in opposition. We demand to have —

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Time is up.

Ms McLaughlin: — the same facilities as Sinn Féin receives in the Dáil. [Interruption.]

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The debate is over. Please behave yourselves. Thank you.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I have been advised by the party Whips that, in accordance with Standing Order 27(1A)(b), there is an agreement that we dispense with the three minutes and move straight to a Division.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Members, please take your ease while we change the personnel at the Table for the next item of business.

Ms Hunter: I beg to move

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour and 30 minutes for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes in which to propose and 10 minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. All other Members who are called to speak will have five minutes.

Ms Hunter: I welcome the opportunity to open the debate on this important motion. Simply put, we will be discussing the need to fill the tummies of children in our schools in order to empower and uplift them with at least one guaranteed meal a day.

Hunger is recognised as a marker of an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Too often, children struggle with poverty and hunger in total silence, too pained to ask for lunch money when they know that their parents simply do not have it. This is not an issue in a faraway country; it is right here, at home, in Northern Ireland. Our children are literally starving in our classrooms, particularly those who have parents on low incomes. The Research and Information Service (RaISe) has revealed that, in my constituency, almost 50% of children in the Coleraine area benefit from free school meals. The need for more to have access to free school meals is evident. I know that more families really wish that they could benefit from them.

Today, I urge the Minister to commit to a bold, transformative ambition: a serious expansion of free school meal provision across our schools, with a funded plan to deliver universal access by 2030. The proposal recognises that providing free school meals in primary schools and throughout the school system delivers multiple benefits: improved nutrition, enhanced educational outcomes and long-term economic returns for our society. Why does that matter? We know that families face growing pressures and struggles with food insecurity. We know that they are under immense pressure because of the cost-of-living crisis, with the ever-increasing price of food, energy and basic essentials. Many working families are stretched to breaking point. The number of children living in poverty in Northern Ireland remains alarmingly high. According to recent figures, around 26% of pupils are eligible for free school meals. That leaves a significant portion of children who live in poverty but who are not currently covered. Furthermore, we in the SDLP find the decision to halt the school holiday food grant scheme deeply regrettable. It previously provided vital support to low-income families during the school holidays, when children lose a daily meal at school and are at an increased risk of hunger. That policy change has definitely left a gap.

There is clear evidence that children from low-income backgrounds and those who qualify for free school meals face an attainment gap in our schools. Providing free meals ensures that every child at school is nourished and ready to learn and reduces hunger or stress, which damages concentration in the classroom. Research makes it clear that free school meals improve pupils' nutrition, health, attendance, engagement, behaviour and, ultimately, educational attainment and long-term outcomes. Free school meals should be viewed not merely as a cost but as a long-term investment, with improved health, better progression, reduced inequalities and reduced costs elsewhere in the system. Studies in the UK have shown that universal or expanded provision can, most importantly, reduce stigma, drive up healthy eating and deliver returns in reduced child poverty and social mobility.

Today, we call on the Minister to significantly expand eligibility for free school meals ahead of making them universal. We demand that the eligibility criteria be widened so that many more low-income families and children who are currently excluded can access free breakfast or lunch at school. It is not acceptable that nearly one in five children in poverty in Northern Ireland remains ineligible. That is a failure. We call for the reinstatement or a redesign of holiday provision. The previous school holiday food grant scheme provided essential support to children and families during breaks and ensured that our children did not go hungry when detached from school provision. That must be restored or reformed now. We ask that the Minister of Education, in collaboration with the Minister of Finance and the wider sector, commits to a clear, transparent, funded road map. That plan should include timelines, pilot schemes, phased universal access that will be extended to all children by 2030 and resource commitments to deliver it sustainably.

What role can the Executive play? The Executive claim that they are serious about tackling poverty and inequality, yet it is clear that we are falling behind other jurisdictions across these islands when it comes to free school meal provision. Other Governments are expanding universal or nearly universal access, reducing stigma and closing gaps. Every day, families in Northern Ireland are being squeezed. School meal price increases and rising costs are really hitting families. It is time that we prioritise families. Children who should be protected are waking up hungry or skipping meals. That cannot continue; it cannot stay that way. Free school meals are not an optional cost; they really are an investment in the future of our children. They are a foundational building block for a child's well-being, learning outcomes and social mobility. If we are really serious about ensuring equality, tackling the attainment gap and lifting people out of poverty, we must act now.

The motion is not just about providing meals or virtue signalling; it is about dignity, fairness, our children's futures and the importance of equal access to opportunity. It is about parents not having to make impossible choices and children not having to miss out on the simple right of a nutritious meal, allowing them to thrive in the classroom. We call on the Minister to recognise the evidence that we have discussed here today, commit to expanding free school meals, restore holiday food support and deliver a funded path to universal provision by 2030. We cannot leave our families and, most importantly, our children behind. I commend the motion to the House.

Mr Baker: I thank the Member for proposing this very important motion. Sadly, we have debated this issue, and the relevant statistics, a lot in the near two years since we have been back. There is a lot of support around the House for addressing the issue. However, we have not had action. We cannot have any more missed opportunities. There are Ministers in post. We know that there are constraints because of the Budget, how we are set up and austerity, but Ministers have a budget, and they should be prioritising those who need it the most. We cannot have those missed opportunities. Families are feeling the cost of education. In the past number of weeks, the School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill completed its passage through the Assembly. Sadly, that will not go far enough: it will not bring down the cost of the average post-primary uniform. Far from it. We are going to face that challenge time and time again, rather than working together, listening to the evidence of those who are in the sector and delivering something tangible.

I hope that, with a fair wind, my private Member's Bill will be before the House early in the new year. I hope that everyone will support it, because I want to end holiday hunger. The Bill will impact on 90,000 children. While it will not be the panacea for the problems that we have in this place or a silver bullet for tackling child poverty, it will go some way in doing that. It will be one piece of a very wide puzzle.

We need Ministers to be in listening mode, particularly the Minister for Communities, His anti-poverty strategy does not go far enough. That has been well documented by those at the coalface. When we come back in the new year, I hope that we see a recommitment and desire to be partners and to work together to deliver for the people in all our communities who are suffering.

I wanted to sponsor a private Member's Bill to end holiday hunger because of what I have seen in my volunteer youth work. We run a number of programmes throughout the summer months, when we see a rise in what would be described as, for want of a better term, antisocial behaviour. A lot of our children are crying out for attention and help, and it comes down to poverty. When we run the schemes — we run them in Lagmore, but I know that they are run in Monkstown and across the country — we see what the children face. In the summer, we had an eight-year-old wee lad who was filling his pockets with food to bring home to his sibling, because there was not enough food in the cupboards at home. If that eight-year-old is facing that challenge, how do we expect him to go to school and achieve what other children are achieving. It is not going to happen.

We must work together across the Chamber to make sure that we prioritise our budgets. I hope that Members support me when I bring my Bill to the house. It will cost money to deliver on the Bill's provisions, but, with all due respect to the motions that come here for debate — they are important in highlighting issues — we need action. That is what families need and it is what children need to reach their full potential. In the remaining 18 months that we have in this place, I hope that we can deliver legislation that will help people. Then, in the next mandate, we can go even further. That is what we need to do.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): The Business Committee has arranged to meet at 1.00 pm. I propose, therefore, by leave of the Assembly, to suspend the sitting until 2.00 pm. The debate will continue after Question Time, when the first Member to be called will be Gary Middleton.

Mr O'Dowd (The Minister of Finance): The Back in Business rate support scheme was reintroduced last year as part of my Department's efforts to encourage business ratepayers to occupy long-term vacant retail premises. The scheme provides a 50% rate reduction for up to two years once a retail premises that has been empty for 12 months or more becomes occupied. That provides vital support with operating costs during the challenging early stages of setting up. Our high streets and shops are vital to supporting the local economy and employment. For many, they are essential not only for getting daily supplies but for meeting and socialising with others and are at the heart of our local communities.

The Back in Business scheme aims to help businesses establish themselves in or expand into previously vacant premises, breathing new life into those sites and revitalising our town centres. Since its reintroduction in April 2024, 79 businesses across all 11 district councils have benefited from a 50% reduction in their business rates through the scheme, amounting to almost half a million pounds in support.

Mr Dunne: I thank the Minister for his answer. Businesses in Northern Ireland face some of the highest rates in the UK. When combined with rising energy and labour costs, significant pressure is being put on their ability to survive and grow. Given the urgency of the situation, how do you plan to ensure that your proposed rates reforms will provide meaningful and immediate relief for businesses, including those on our high streets? If you wait until the end of the 2027-28 rating year to do a full review, for some that will be too little, too late on your watch.

Mr O'Dowd: The Member will, I hope, be aware of the statement that I made to the Chamber on, I think, this day last week on how I see future business rates support. My proposal is cost-neutral, because I am conscious that the Executive's Budget continues to face considerable constraints. I have proposed using money from other areas, which includes reducing benefits for those who can most afford to pay and using the savings to help our small and medium-sized businesses. On the basis of my original proposal, we could probably raise around £6·8 million, a significant proportion of which I would like to see being used to support our small and medium-sized businesses.

Mr McGuigan: Minister, you said that the Back in Business scheme was introduced in 2024: are there plans to continue it next year? Over and above your proposals, what is currently being done under the current rating system to support our high-street businesses?

Mr O'Dowd: Continuing the Back in Business scheme will require legislation, and officials are already preparing legislation to continue that programme and the support for our high-street businesses. We use the small business rate relief scheme, which is an effective support mechanism for our local businesses. As I said in my original answer, considerable support is being delivered to our business sector through the scheme, and I want to enhance that support from our current spending envelope. As Finance Minister, I have to tell other Ministers to look at what they have so that we can move forward, so I want to use the scheme as an example of how we can redirect spend to support our small and medium-sized businesses.

Mr McGrath: Some towns have more vacant properties than others. Downpatrick in my constituency is particularly badly hit. The scheme, which provides support for two years, is welcome. As part of your considerations, however, is there the potential to extend the scheme beyond two years for some businesses, especially in areas that are particularly badly affected by vacant properties on the high street?

Mr O'Dowd: The scheme, as it is currently mapped out for the two years, is the best that we can deliver at this stage. However, once a business moves off that programme, it will go into the small business rate relief scheme, which will also offer rate relief to the business if it falls into that category. As I said to the Members who spoke previously, I want to broaden that criteria and support more businesses through the small business rate relief scheme.

The Member mentioned vacant properties. I have proposals for a gradual removal of the vacant non-domestic properties rate relief, moving to a 75% tariff and then to a 100% tariff to encourage the owners of vacant properties to put those properties into use.

Mr O'Dowd: Mr Speaker, with your permission, I will group questions 2 and 6.

In my statement to the Assembly last Tuesday, I outlined my plans to accelerate the strategic review of rates to secure positive and progressive changes to the business rates system: changes that would see enhanced support for small businesses, which are the backbone of our local economy; change that tackles the high level of vacancies in our towns and city centres; change that supports businesses that are starting out; and change that helps to accelerate business growth. The current small business rate relief scheme provides vital support to around 30,000 small businesses. The support delivered under the scheme has, however, remained unchanged since 2012. I want to create a fair environment for all businesses, and I plan to consult before the new year. That will give businesses the chance to share final views before changes are put to ministerial colleagues on enhancements to the support.

In order to tackle the high prevalence of vacant units, work now needs to be undertaken to move the non-domestic rate from 50% to 75% and then to 100%. Given the Executive's Programme for Government commitments on housing and regeneration and the work on preventing dilapidation, there is a unique window of opportunity to maximise the impact of the change by working actively at a cross-departmental level. It is, however, a significant change that connects to many strands of policy across Departments. Therefore, Executive agreement will be required before the change can be implemented. I have instructed my officials to take forward the policy work required to secure Executive agreement.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you, Minister, for your answer. We appreciate what you want to do and what your predecessor wanted to do, but business owners are literally hanging on by their fingernails, and they really need support now. With four Executive Ministers, you can push it right on to the agenda and get it moving as soon as possible: when will you do that?

Mr O'Dowd: Politics is the art of the possible. It is better for me to try to attain consensus on a policy around the Executive table rather than simply drive a policy through. There are instances when I will use the three-Minister rule and when it will be appropriate to use it, but we are not at that stage yet.

We have to engage at political level and at ministerial level, and I want to seek consensus on the issue and get agreement. It might be a useful headline in which the Member can say, "Do this", "Do that" or "Do the other", but where will it bring you? Will it bring agreement? My strong view is that it will not bring agreement at this stage. My strategy is to seek consensus around the Executive table.

Mr Gildernew: I thank the Minister for his answer. Traders and businesses in towns such as Dungannon will warmly welcome any support that is going into regeneration. Will you outline how what you said in your oral statement can contribute towards regeneration?

Mr O'Dowd: As I said, it will progress and enhance support for small businesses. It will bring forward an increase in liability for vacant commercial units. It will develop a policy to help businesses to expand or renovate. That is a very important policy, because many businesses want to expand on their current site but are concerned that, if they do, they will immediately have a rates hike to their bill. I propose that we give them a holiday from that hike, which will allow them to bed the new expanded premises in and absorb the construction costs etc. That will be a benefit to businesses.

The proposal will also benefit construction businesses and stimulate the construction industry further through renovations to properties. That is a win-win situation for everyone, and I want to see it move forward as quickly as possible.

Mr McMurray: I thank the Minister. Politics is the art of the possible, but "the attainable" is the next part of that quotation. Is the Minister confident that that is attainable within the consultation period?

The Minister referenced the move from 75% to 100%: is he able to provide clarity on that? I have been out across South Down and have been everywhere from Warrenpoint Chamber of Commerce and Newcastle Chamber of Commerce to Kilkeel Chamber of Commerce, and it is the rates that are prohibiting the return of bustling high streets in Northern Ireland.

Mr O'Dowd: It is understandable that there is a focus on rates, as that is the Executive's only major tax-gathering power. Therefore, it is understandable that there is a focus on what businesses or homeowners pay in rates. It is also worth looking at the other side of that equation, however, which is the £1·6 billion that we bring in through the rates and that goes directly to the delivery and maintenance of front-line services. That, in turn, benefits businesses directly and indirectly, with public-sector workers doing business with their businesses. There is a circular economy around that.

I have set out how, within our current funding envelope, we can reshape our support for small and medium-sized businesses without placing additional burdens on those who cannot afford to pay. It is about fairness and equity around the entire issue. Yes, there are pressures, but I have proposals in front of me and am confident that all the Executive parties want to support our small and medium-sized businesses; I have no doubt about that. There may be slight disagreements as to how and why we do that, but I have to engage with my Executive colleagues in order to seek agreement on it. If everybody approaches it with an open mind and the objective of supporting our small and medium-sized businesses, we will achieve consensus.

Mr O'Dowd: On 28 October, I launched a new pilot recruitment initiative for administrative officers (AOs) in the north-west. That pilot marks a shift away from the traditional annual recruitment campaigns towards a more agile and dynamic approach. The response has been very encouraging, with over 4,500 individuals expressing an interest in the pilot competition. Following that, applicants were invited to complete a self-assessment of their skills and experience, and, from that process, 1,420 of the highest-scoring candidates were invited to submit an application. Just over 950 completed applications have been received, and those candidates have been invited to attend one of two recruitment days that are taking place this Wednesday and Thursday in Derry.

Due to the unprecedented demand, my Department will be inviting further candidates to submit an application to attend a third recruitment event in the north-west. Planning for that is under way, and the next group of candidates will soon receive further details regarding their participation. At those events, applicants will have the chance to explore available vacancies, speak directly to departmental representatives and complete interviews on the day. Importantly, outcomes will be communicated within days, making it a faster and more candidate-friendly process.

Mr McHugh: Go raibh maith agat, a Aire, as do fhreagraí go dtí seo.

Minister, are you able to outline the criteria that were used when people expressed an interest in jobs in the Civil Service? What criteria were used to select candidates for interview?

Mr O'Dowd: Candidates who expressed an interest in Civil Service administrative officer posts in the north-west were requested to submit an expression of interest in order to assess whether they met the minimum eligibility criteria, including age, right to work and pre-agreed, preferred experience requirements for the role. That involved a self-assessment that asked candidates to rate their level of experience against a set of predefined administrative and organisational criteria that are relevant to AO duties. Each criterion carried a predetermined rating, reflecting its importance to the role. The candidate's total score was calculated by combining those responses across all seven criteria and meeting the minimum eligibility criteria. As I outlined in my initial answer, due to the unprecedented demand, my Department is planning a third recruitment event.

Mr Durkan: Minister, it was welcomed or heralded as good news that, when we had over 900 vacancies in the Civil Service in the north-west, we were going to recruit 200 AOs. The feedback that I have been receiving from many applicants, however, shows that they are frustrated at what they perceive as a lack of fairness and transparency in the process.

Can the Minister please explain why people have been told that they did not meet the experience threshold despite having worked in the role as an agency worker for years? Can he give us an assurance that this ineligibility was not down to other factors such as age or ability?

Mr O'Dowd: It is certainly not down to age, because that would be discriminatory under employment legislation. As I have set out, each candidate filled out an expression of interest setting out, in their words, how they believed they met the criteria. That was assessed, and, if they met the minimum standard and they fell within the highest-scoring 900, they were invited for interview. If they did not and remain on the list, they may be invited to the next application process, which will be announced in due course. All recruitment exercises have to be carried out with due regard to employment legislation and equality legislation. If the Member has evidence that somebody has been —.

Mr Durkan: I asked for an assurance.

Mr O'Dowd: Sorry, do you want to answer the question as well? [Laughter.]

I was just checking to see whether the Member wanted to answer the question as well as ask it. He is seeking assurance. Perhaps, if he listened, he might have assurance. Maybe he will not, but that is up to him to decide. I am satisfied that I have not been presented with any evidence that suggests to me that the system that we are currently operating is anything other than fair and equitable. If you have substantive evidence, please share it with me.

Mr O'Dowd: When setting a Budget, the Executive collectively agree a funding envelope for each Department, typically comprising baseline funding, earmarked funding and a general allocation. Earmarked funding must be utilised for a specific purpose, which, in some instances, may include statutory functions. Baseline and general allocations may be spent at the discretion of respective Ministers in line with their departmental priorities. Each Minister is responsible for ensuring that their Department’s statutory obligations are fulfilled within the funding envelope agreed for their Department by the Executive. It is important to note that there is often a degree of flexibility and scalability within statutory functions, and it is for each Department to determine the suitable level. Similarly, Departments should also consider whether improved outcomes could be delivered through legislative changes. In that context, it is not appropriate to put a percentage on the level of discretionary spend in a Department.

Mr Frew: I thank the Minister for his answer. His answer contained everything but the terminology around discretionary spend, which our Ministers are increasingly using daily. When the Minister is deciding a Budget or considering a Budget, does he take discretionary spend into consideration before he allocates that funding?

Mr O'Dowd: It is important to clarify that I do not decide a Budget, as much as, perhaps, I would like to on some days. I make recommendations to the Executive, I bring a draft Budget to the Executive, and the Executive either agree or disagree with the draft Budget. If they agree, that draft Budget goes out to consultation. I then bring the consultation report back to the Executive and seek agreement on a final Budget. If the Executive agree, it is brought to the House. I know that Mr Frew knows the process very well. The House passes the Budget Act. I am bound by the Budget Act, as is every Minister in the Executive. On discretionary spend, I cannot micromanage every Minister's Department. Ministers have policy decisions to make in their Departments. It is up to each Minister to decide whether the level of expenditure that they are giving to statutory spend will cover their statutory obligations. If they feel that they cannot cover their statutory obligations, they have to review that, in my opinion, or they have to make legislative changes to the statutory provision. That should be done, in my opinion, through the scope of whether any statutory changes will improve services rather than reduce services.

Ms Ferguson: Minister, you mentioned the difference between baseline, earmarked and discretionary funding. Do you consider pay to be a discretionary cost?

Mr O'Dowd: Public-sector pay should be decided at the start of the financial calendar year rather than midway through the calendar year. We did that in the Civil Service branch that I am responsible for. As part of the Budget process, I will bring recommendations to Executive colleagues for public-sector pay to be set in their Departments at the start of the year rather than waiting until mid-term or the end of the year in the hope that they may receive Barnett consequentials or whatever it may be. We cannot deliver public services without public-sector workers, and we should not leave them in a position where they are waiting or becoming frustrated because their pay settlement was not dealt with at the start of the budgetary year.

Dr Aiken: Minister, one of the big issues about discretionary spending is that it tends to disappear into the arm's-length bodies (ALBs), and one of the biggest issues that we have is controlling and seeing what is in the ALBs. Has any progress been made on having more openness and transparency on ALBs? That would be a real issue to the Minister as well as to Ministers.

Mr O'Dowd: All ALBs are answerable to their boards and their chief accounting officers. Under the legislative basis on which they were established, they are also answerable to their sponsoring Ministers. When I was in Departments that had ALBs, I had no difficulty in making enquiries and making sure that they were aware that a Minister was present and sought clarification and assurance on public spend. There are also the Committees, which do an excellent scrutiny job. They also have a responsibility to question ALBs on their expenditure.

The Member raises a broader point, however, about the amount of public funds that go to ALBs. That has been debated and discussed many times, and Ministers have the authority to do that at this stage. There needs to be an urgent review of the number of ALBs, their functions and responsibilities, and whether those could be carried out in a more effective and efficient way that delivers the front-line public services that they have been mandated to deliver.

Mr O'Dowd: With the Speaker's permission, I intend to answer questions 5 and 8 together.

The autumn Budget tomorrow must be used as an opportunity to support workers and families. I recognise the scale of the financial challenge that the Westminster Government are facing, but investment in public services is key to growing the economy.

Economic growth and improved public services cannot be achieved without meaningful investment. The Chancellor has political choices to make. I would encourage the Chancellor to do the right thing and use the autumn Budget to help hard-working families by increasing the tax-free childcare threshold; reversing the two-child cap, recognising the harmful impact that it has on families and that it increases the level of child poverty; backing hospitality businesses by making changes to the VAT rate; and supporting the community and voluntary sector by changing the approach to the local growth fund.

As the cost-of-living crisis continues, I have consistently urged the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to avoid further austerity measures that would place an unfair burden on people, businesses or public services. The Treasury has an ideal opportunity tomorrow to support public services, workers, families and small- and medium-sized businesses. I hope that it seizes that opportunity.

Mr Allen: I thank the Minister for restating his press release, which I already read. The question that I asked was about what engagement he has had with the Treasury on the forthcoming Budget. If any measures are related directly to the cost of living, will the Minister give a guarantee that he will work with the Communities Minister to ensure that families and households here are supported?

Mr O'Dowd: The Member can be assured that my press release states exactly what I have done, because it sets out what engagement I have had with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I hope that that satisfies the Member in that, when he reads the press release, he realises that the Minister is doing what he says that he is doing.

As for working with the Communities Minister, I will work with all Ministers in supporting them to deliver effective and efficient front-line public services. What decisions individual Ministers make for their Departments are, by and large, for individual Ministers within their funding envelopes. When Ministers make decisions or choose to fund project a or project b, they have to be conscious that, if they fund project a or project b, they are not funding project c or d. Each time that a Minister makes an announcement about a project, it would be worthwhile for people to ask, "If you're funding that, what are you not funding?". That is not to criticise the Minister or to open the Minister up to ridicule. The reality is that, when you make a choice, there are two sides to that choice.

Miss Hargey: Thank you, Minister. You are right: the British Government can make a political decision tomorrow to protect workers and families. To that end, will you outline the specifics of the other issues that you have raised with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury?

Mr O'Dowd: I, along with the Finance Ministers from Wales and Scotland, attended the Finance: Interministerial Standing Committee (F:ISC) meeting in October. We had wide-ranging discussions about the Budget, how Westminster interacts with the devolved institutions and how, sometimes — quite often, it has to be said — decisions are made in Westminster that have no true reflection on the reality of life for people here and how we run public services. Two examples of that are the National Insurance hikes, which had a significant detrimental impact on Departments here and elsewhere; and the family farming inheritance tax issue, which was another decision made in Westminster that has significant impacts here, perhaps more so than in other places.

As I said, I directly asked the Westminster Government about tax-free childcare. That is important in supporting hard-working families out there to help meet the costs of childcare. The two-child benefit cap has been raised time and time again. If the Government were to deal with that, they could lift millions of children across these islands out of poverty. Why would you not make that decision? That is my view on that. Another specific issue here is the local growth fund. There was a decision in England and Wales to use the local growth fund to regenerate town centres and villages. That is worthy in itself, and I have no difficulty with it, but we supported the previous Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) through different schemes, largely resource, which mainly and strategically helped the people who were furthest away from the workplace to get back into work. I want to see the Treasury and the Government recognise that and give us the tools to do it.

Ms Forsythe: Minister, with so many things going on side by side, it is important that we get clear and accurate numbers out to the public. The Finance Committee got the latest out-turn figures in our papers, and there was reference to the December monitoring round. The Budget will be announced tomorrow, and there may be subsequent Barnett consequentials. When do you think that you will be in a position to outline what exactly the Budget means for us in Northern Ireland and be able to present that to the House?

Mr O'Dowd: I have to wait for the announcement tomorrow. There may be Barnett consequentials as a result of that announcement, although I am not expecting a significant amount of Barnett consequentials. Once that is announced and I have the information directly from the Treasury — I also require information from our own Departments — I will be in a position to present the Executive with a monitoring round paper. I want to do that as quickly as possible. That will be a separate paper from the Budget paper, but both are aligned and should be cognisant of each other. When I have all the data that I require, I will not waste any time in presenting that to the Executive for a decision.

Ms Nicholl: The Minister mentioned that he raised the issue of the local growth fund with the UK Government. Has there been any discussion about a transitional arrangement as we move from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to the local growth fund?

Mr O'Dowd: Yes, there has been direct engagement about that. My officials, on behalf of other Departments and using information received from other Departments, are engaging with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the NIO about a transition. However, this has to be constantly recorded: as far as Whitehall officials are concerned, the SPF is finished and the transition was last year. They are now moving on to a different programme, so, as far as they are concerned, whatever happened in the past is in the past. Our view is that the SPF was quite successful here and achieved many of the goals that we wanted it to achieve and that there should at least be a transition from that to the new programme. Given the lateness of the engagement from the Whitehall Departments and the NIO, the responsibility for that transition rests with them.

My officials are engaging with them, and there will be another meeting this Thursday. I updated the Executive this morning and I have committed to updating Executive colleagues following Thursday's meeting.

Mr O'Toole: Minister, lots of people will be sympathetic with the priorities that you have outlined. Certainly, the two-child limit is immoral: it should never have existed and it needs to go. Are we to understand that, if the UK Government do not act on any of the priorities that you outlined, you will seek either to have new fiscal powers devolved or to find revenue to do those things yourself locally?

Mr O'Dowd: The Member is aware of my position on fiscal powers. I outlined it again this afternoon during a debate on the Budget. That is on record. The Executive's ability to continue to mitigate the impacts of decisions by the British Government is very restricted. It will obviously be a decision for the Executive when I bring my Budget proposals to them, but every pound that we spend on mitigating the British Government's detrimental decisions is a pound that we cannot spend elsewhere. Therefore, we have to balance all those decisions. The final decision on the way forward will be one for the Executive.

Mr Speaker: We move to topical questions.

Mr O'Dowd: The Member will be acutely aware that NI Water receives around half a billion pounds annually in public funds. That is stage 1 of the plan. Stage 2 is that we have seen significant additional investment in NI Water as a result of a strategic use of monitoring rounds. We have connected over 5,000 homes to waste water infrastructure in the past two years and have plans to move beyond that number. There is another part of the plan. The Member is aware that the Infrastructure Minister is bringing forward legislation on developer contributions. I believe that that legislation is at Second Stage. I thought that that Bill had had its First Reading and been introduced in the House, but maybe the consultation is coming to a close. The Infrastructure Minister will be able to confirm what progress there has been in that regard.

I am open to suggestions from the Member. He has now ruled out water charges, which is good. If he has any other suggestions that do not involve water charges, I am happy to listen to them. The Member told me earlier this afternoon that he had produced a number of documents. Perhaps there is a suggestion in one of those.

Mr O'Toole: Minister, to be absolutely clear, I have never advocated for water charges. That is a weird deflection from the fact that you and your party are doing nothing. In Dáil Éireann, Mary Lou McDonald said that the Irish Government are "a do-nothing Government". My God, it takes one to know one. Your plan is no plan at all. Social houses cannot be built, jobs cannot be created, factories cannot be built and our natural resources — Lough Neagh and Belfast lough — are falling into degradation because you will do nothing about the funding of NI Water. Is there any plan at all, or are you content to literally do nothing?

Mr O'Dowd: If allocating half a billion pounds, connecting 5,000 properties to waste water treatment works and the Infrastructure Minister engaging in a legislative process on developer contributions amounts to doing nothing, I do not know what world the leader of the Opposition is living in.

Again, if there is a suggestion in one of the quite thin documents that he produced that does not involve the introduction of domestic water charges or the privatisation of NI Water, I am happy to listen to it.

Mr O'Dowd: There are a number of reports to be studied, the latest of which is the inquiry report. Its recommendations deserve to be studied closely, and I will play my part in responding to any recommendations that relate to the role of the Civil Service. There are lessons for us all to learn from the COVID experience, and I am committed to working with others to ensure that those lessons are learned.

Dr Aiken: I know that it is not your particular responsibility, Minister, but, because you are looking at Civil Service reform, I will put this question to you. I have been waiting for well over a month for a response from the Senior Civil Service about how it sets its criteria for bonus payments, and I would like to know whether the terms of reference look at measures of effectiveness. It comes under your Department, so can you inform me whether there is any indication that the Senior Civil Service is progressing at pace towards providing an answer, or are we just allowing it to set the agenda?

Mr O'Dowd: I am not aware of any bonus scheme for senior civil servants. I think that it came to an end a number of years ago.

It is easy to take potshots at the Civil Service. It does make mistakes. There are errors made and lessons to be learned. Learning, skill sets and all those sorts of things need to be reviewed. At the end of the day, however, civil servants, 99·9% of the time, are out there delivering public services, engaging with Ministers and Committees and trying to do their best to improve the lives of all the people whom we serve. Do you know why they do that? It is because they are stakeholders. They live here. They use the services here. Their children use the services here. Their parents and grandparents use the services here. They are therefore stakeholders in our society. In my role as Minister with responsibility for the Civil Service, however, I will ensure that, where lessons need to be learned, they will be learned, and that, where we have to make improvements, improvements will be made. I have no qualms about doing that. As I said earlier, whether they are from the report on COVID or from the report on the renewable heat incentive scheme, we, collectively, have lessons to learn.

Mr O'Dowd: It is important that LPS remain independent in the matter and that there be no ministerial interference in setting land valuations. LPS plays an independent role. It engages with agents appointed by landowners. Understandably, there will be a negotiation in such scenarios to reach agreement on the price of land. There will be expectations on the side of the landowner and expectations on the side of the LPS, but, as Minister, I should not directly intervene.

Mr K Buchanan: Thanks for that answer, Minister. I mentioned that there is a big disparity. Some of the farmers are being offered £16,000, £17,000 or £18,000 per acre, yet it costs close to £30,000 to replace that land. What would you therefore say to farmers or landowners in the A5 area? There are over 300 of them, and they have inheritance tax and the land take from the A5 looming over them. As I said, there is a massive disparity in the figures. Something has to be done, because it is not possible for them to run their business and also replace land, based on the figure that they might get to do so.

Mr O'Dowd: The Member know my views on inheritance tax. It is an unfair taxation policy, particularly here. I do not want to interfere in individual cases, but I want to be assured that the policy and legislation are being adhered to fairly. As I have said, I deal with a number of Members' correspondence cases, some of which relate to historical land cases. My response to my officials is that they need to reassure me that everyone is being treated fairly. Ongoing engagement and negotiations should therefore continue, and the land agent appointed by the landowner should engage fully with LPS to try to reach a settlement that is agreeable to all sides.

Mr O'Dowd: It is vital. It is estimated that the Executive and their agencies own land that is comparable in size to County Armagh. We have to use a lot of that land and property for the delivery of required services, and it is used regularly. However, in that portfolio is land and property that, in my opinion, we should dispose of in a managed way and, when those capital receipts come back in to the Executive, we can reinvest them into modern infrastructure for the delivery of public services. It is vital that each Department has a strategic management plan.

Mr Sheehan: Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as ucht a fhreagraí go dtí seo.

What steps has the Minister's Department taken to progress community asset transfers of unused or underused buildings that are in public ownership?

Mr O'Dowd: We have progressed changes to the policy to try to make it simpler and easier for the community sector to access unused property that it believes can be brought back into community use for the benefit of the community. I continue to engage with elements of the community that raise questions with me and enquire about that. We are continually looking at how we can improve it. There is a piece of quite outdated legislation — I think that it dates back to 1931 or 1933 — that somewhat ties the Executive's hands in that the property has to be disposed of without any loss of benefit to the public finances, which, on the face of it, is sound. However, it is about how you measure loss to public finances. That legislation needs to be updated, and I have asked officials to look at it to see whether we can make meaningful progress in updating it, whether that is in this mandate or at the start of the next mandate.

Mr O'Dowd: Given that we are at the start of that process, I do not think that we will be able to change legislation in this mandate. However, I hope that we will leave the groundwork and a lot of preparatory work available for the next mandate so that legislation can move quite quickly.

Mr Allen: I thank the Minister for that answer. Does he anticipate that that reform will include strengthened protections for homeowners who face unclear service charges, disputes or poor management?

Mr O'Dowd: Yes. The requirement for a change in legislation or the introduction of legislation in that area is driven by that need. There is a feeling, which is coming through in some of the initial evidence reports that were done on the matter, that property owners in shared accommodation are at a disadvantage. They certainly feel as though they are at a disadvantage. In some cases, the evidence backs that up. If we are going to bring forward legislation that is aimed at protecting the rights of property owners or those who rent in shared property facilities, as with all things that relate to changes to legislation, we have to balance the rights of the other side of the equation. That legislation will be open to inquiry and debate in the Chamber and elsewhere. We want to bring forward a piece of legislation that is workable and that, in particular, protects the rights of those people who feel as though they have been disadvantaged thus far.

Mr O'Dowd: I have made representations in writing and verbally to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on that for the very reasons that the Member outlined. It is important that we support hard-working families with the cost of childcare. That is a way in which the Treasury can assist. As the Member will know, the Executive have invested quite significantly in that field. I would hope that that investment would continue through the multi-year Budget.

Ms Nicholl: I thank the Minister for that answer. What further childcare support can the Executive give through the Education Department to support people with those astronomical costs?

Mr O'Dowd: The Education Minister delivers the childcare policy on behalf of the Executive. The Executive have, from almost a standstill start on that and other areas of child support, invested £55 million in the past financial year. I will make proposals to the Executive about increasing that over the next three-year budgetary period to assist in further support being delivered to hard-working families.

Mr Middleton: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. I do not think that there is a single Member who does not want to see our children healthy, well fed and ready to learn. We all recognise the statistics before us: 13% of children live in food-insecure households. We understand that nutritious food is the fuel for educational attainment. However, although we share the compassion behind the motion, we must also share a commitment to reality.

I begin by commending the Minister for the action that he has already taken. While others deal in unfunded wish lists, the Minister has dealt in action. He recently announced that, from the 2025-26 academic year, the eligibility threshold for free school meals and uniform grants will rise to £15,390. Crucially, he has also committed to linking future increases to inflation. That targeted, sustainable intervention is designed to support what many describe as the working poor; families who work hard but struggle to make ends meet.

The Opposition's motion mentions comparisons with other jurisdictions, nothing that they are expanding universal provision. However, they are being selective. They fail to mention that, for families outside those specific age groups, the eligibility criteria in Great Britain are far less generous than our own. In England and Wales, the earnings threshold for families on universal credit is just £7,400. In Scotland, it is roughly £9,500. Compare that with Northern Ireland, where, under the Minister, the threshold is over £15,000. We are already casting a much wider net for low-income families than our counterparts across the water.

Of course, we recognise that there is more to do, but we then come to the central issue: funding. The Education Authority faces an overcommitment of some £280 million. The Department is chronically underfunded. The independent report entitled 'Investing in a Better Future' made that clear. The motion calls for a road map to universal provision by 2030, but let us be clear about the price tag: extending universal free school meals to all pupils from nursery to year 14 would cost the public purse an additional £202 million every year. That figure does not even include the capital costs. We have over 1,100 schools, nearly 800 of which are primary schools. A massive expansion in meal numbers would require new kitchens, new dining halls and significant infrastructural upgrades. Where is the budget for that capital investment? We hear calls from the Benches opposite for subsidies and expansions, but we rarely hear where the money should come from. If we are to find the extra £202 million for this specific policy, which Department does the Opposition suggest that we take it from? Do we take it from Health or from Infrastructure, or should we further stretch the Education budget, which is already at breaking point? Poverty is a scourge, but it requires a whole-system approach. It is not the job solely of the Department of Education to solve those issues of inequality. That is why the Minister for Communities has stepped up, recently extending welfare mitigations to 2028, which will provide stability for families.

We support the Education Minister in his fight for additional resources for education, but until that funding is secured from Treasury and allocated —

Mr Allen: Will the Member give way?

Mr Middleton: — by the Executive, we must be realistic; we cannot spend money that we do not have.

I give way to Mr Allen.

Mr Allen: The Member highlights the point about where we will take the money from to provide that required investment, but will he also acknowledge the importance of investing to save right across Departments — health inequalities, for example, can be tackled if we invest to save?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Middleton: I do agree. We absolutely should invest to save. It is particularly relevant to the Department of Health. That being said, the scale of this particular initiative, whilst it would be a good one to do, is such that over £202 million would be required in additional resource each and every year. Those of us who sit — who have the privilege, if you like, of sitting — on the Education Committee know the challenges that exist in our education system, and those are not only to do additional things, which are all very worthwhile doing, but to even stand still . We are in a very dangerous situation when it comes to finances.

In closing, I support the Education Minister's doing what he can, but we do need the wider Executive to provide that funding support to allow us to take forward all the initiatives that we want to see to improve the outcomes for our children.

Mr Mathison: I support the motion. Notwithstanding a challenging Budget picture, which I have no doubt that the Minister will speak to, as has Gary Middleton, Alliance has long been supportive of wider provision of free school meals in Northern Ireland. We are happy to support the motion on that basis. Last year, I was pleased to sponsor the UNISON free school meals campaign event, which took place here in Parliament Buildings and recognised the work of that campaign, which began in 2021. In many ways, today's motion is very much indebted to that UNISON free school meals campaign.

As everyone has highlighted already, we all know the importance of ensuring that children are in school, properly nourished and ready to learn. Unfortunately, that is not a reality that can be guaranteed for all children in our schools. Teachers will regularly speak of children whom they know will come into school not having had breakfast or who arrive at school without an adequate lunch having been provided. There is no doubt that that has a hugely detrimental effect on a child's ability to learn and to concentrate, and that is not an acceptable scenario that we want for any of our children.

The system that we have in Northern Ireland for free school meal provision is not ideal either. Parents must reapply each year, even if their circumstances have not changed. Eligibility is based around the receipt of social security benefits and income thresholds that often do not reflect the true impact of the cost-of-living crisis. Nor, indeed, does it reach all those children who are most in need. A number of reports show that current provision for free school meals often does not get to the children who need it most, and the research commissioned by the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People set out the concerning fact that 41% of children in poverty are not, in fact, eligible for free school meals, and 66% of children who are eligible for free school meals are not, in fact, in poverty. That is not a picture that any of us should be relaxed about in 2025. Those are incredibly concerning statistics.

Despite assurances from the Minister of Education and the Minister for Communities that work would be undertaken to properly scope out auto-enrolment for those who are eligible for free school meals — a practical intervention that could address some of the difficulties around the need to reapply every year — it is not clear how that has been progressed, if at all. I would welcome clarity from the Minister on whether there is any live work ongoing on that issue, because, while budgets are tight, practical and pragmatic interventions that can improve the picture are always welcome, and I do not think that data sharing or bureaucracy should be a barrier to getting free school meal provision to those children who need it most.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the extremely challenging budgetary position that the Department is facing. Gary Middleton has already set that out. However, the Children's Commissioner's briefing on free school meal eligibility does set out some key recommendations on how we can begin to distribute provision on a phased basis, looking perhaps at interventions that could impact on younger children first, ensuring that the youngest children in our school system could receive at least one nutritious meal a day at school, and to help overcome the stigma associated with free school meals. That could then be expanded to older children as budget allows. I do not pretend that any of that can be delivered overnight. I do not think that anybody here believes that we are in a budgetary position where that sort of money is available. However, setting a direction of travel and planning to deliver over a planned phased period is work that we should, surely, all get behind.

The financial challenge has already been raised by a Member. It is important that the Minister does not just set out the scale of the challenge in his budget but that we hear about his plans for transformation within the education system that would deliver savings and approaches to deliver our education system more effectively. It will come as no surprise to anybody that, in the Alliance Party, we consistently highlight the issues of a divided education system and of a school estate that, we know, simply has too many schools and schools that are not in the right place. We need to see an agenda for how we can run that system more efficiently. The issues around the Children's Services Co-operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 are also relevant. It is not simply a matter for the Education Minister, and I have no doubt that he will set that out in his remarks. It requires an approach across all Departments; in particular, I highlight Health and Communities. Andy Allen's intervention about taking an invest-to-save approach was very helpful. For me, this feels like one of those issues where that is entirely appropriate.

I am happy to support today's motion, and I hope that it gets support across the House. I do not underestimate the scale of the budget challenges, but I ask that we look at ambitious plans for transformation within the education system and a planned, phased approach for delivering on the issue.

Mr Burrows: It is an important motion, and not one that I will use in any way to score points over. It raises a real issue about how we can better support our young people. I agree that it cuts across many Departments: Education, Health, Communities and Justice. In the long-term aspiration, there is a real test as to whether, as an Executive and a body politic, we are committed to real prevention and to improving life, health and society outcomes and that we can commit to something that is really ambitious, even if the money is not obviously available right now. Let me just preface say that by saying that free school meals are very important. I have been going around schools in the past number of weeks, particularly primary schools so far, and it is very clear how important the free school meals are, but it is also clear that people who are just outside the eligibility suffer significantly. That is why I think that the argument to raise the eligibility for free school meals is important.

Whilst dealing with the issue of free school meals, I want to touch on another issue, which is a very tangible thing, and perhaps the Minister could give it some thought. When I spoke to two principals, they told me that those who apply for free school meals have to wait six weeks or so for the checks to go through and to be told that they are eligible for the free school meal. In the intervening time, for parents who could not afford the meal, the schools were actually paying for it, but there is no mechanism to recoup that money. In the broad scale of things, it would not cost a significant amount to have a policy tweak that, if you apply for free school meals and are successful, any outlay in the intervening time, whether by the school or the parents, could be reimbursed. That is the way that it has been explained to me. It is a small thing, which would probably not be a huge cost, but that would certainly help.

On the recent increase in the price of school meals, we are not a party that lives in a utopia of, "This is free; this should be free and that should be free". Inflation goes up, and food prices go up, and we understand that it puts pressure on school meal prices, but it should be the last thing to increase. In particular, a 20% increase is very difficult to budget for. I know that, probably because of the laudable effort of trying to avoid school meal price increases, we almost get to the point where we have to increase them by more than the cost of inflation. There is learning there in that, if we are going to increase them, it would actually be better and easier for families to budget if it were done incrementally and gradually, even if it came to the same amount. That said, I still think that the increase in school meal prices should be reviewed.

The real ambition that I would love to get to is this. I spent some time with one union and several teachers, and we talked about the inequalities in our society: there are children who will live much longer than others, and there are children who will have much lower life opportunities.

It may not be today, tomorrow or even for some time, but if, somehow, the Executive can take a leap of faith and have a real ambition to fund, through different Departments, the opportunity for children of all ages, particularly primary-school children, to sit down together and have a free school meal with different types of healthy food, I wonder whether that might have a transformational impact on outcomes in health, opportunities and reliance on benefits in 20, 30 or 40 years' time. That is why I look at the motion with ambition. It is not about hammering the Minister, who has a difficult job to do. The money is not immediately there to do this. There is an element of aspiration, however: if we can find a way to increase the provision of school meals, make them sociable and about learning and create a sense in children, away from screens, of sharing food together on a greater level, it will help not just nutrition but a range of social things. That would be really powerful.

There are good things in the motion. It is fair to say that it is aspirational. We certainly do not expect the Minister to write a cheque for £200 million.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Will the Member draw his remarks to a close?

Mr Burrows: That is me concluded.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you very much.

Mrs Guy: I wish that we did not need the motion. Echoing the comments of others, I feel confident that no Member in the Chamber does not want to see universal free school meals. The issue goes right to the heart of the pressures facing families and the pressures facing the education system.

From the start, it is important to recognise that free school meals are not simply a welfare intervention; they are an educational intervention. They improve nutrition, enhance attainment and deliver long-term social and economic benefits, yet, in Northern Ireland, around 20% of children living in poverty are not eligible for free school meals. It should be a cause for alarm for every one of us that one in five children from low-income families is deprived of that support. Every MLA hears the same stories from parents in their constituency: families are doing everything that they can to cope with the cost of living and are still falling behind. The Department is investing in curriculum reform, literacy and numeracy initiatives and new approaches to teacher training and professional development. Those are worthy and have value, but none of them will achieve its full potential if thousands of children sit in classrooms too hungry to learn.

The Education Authority's plan to increase the cost of school meals by 20% is simply not sustainable for families who are already on the brink. Minister, I was disappointed in your response to my question for written answer asking about your assessment of the impact of those increases on children who are just outside the threshold for free school meals. Signposting struggling families to Public Health Agency (PHA) guidance entitled 'Are you packing a healthy lunch?' feeds into the stigma that struggling parents are simply making bad choices. We could argue that successive Education Ministers have been the ones making the bad choices by not reforming our education system to ensure that we do not duplicate resources.

I have no doubt that cross-departmental working will be crucial to expand free school meals, given the health and economic benefits that that delivers alongside educational benefits. We know that the cost to implement free school meals for pupils from nursery to P7 would be over £100 million extra. I am not so naive as to think that a programme of transformation would result in freeing up that kind of money in the short term or even within the 2030 timeline proposed in the motion, but we could make progress. We could bring more children within the threshold of free school meals. That would bolster the impact of the reforms that the Minister is introducing. Without that investment, the risk is that we undermine their impact.

The children whom we are talking about are not abstract statistics; they are children across Northern Ireland and in our Lagan Valley constituency. The organisations working on the front line understand that. Lisburn food bank, for example, provided insights for the debate. It sees the direct consequences of food insecurity daily. The food bank highlighted the predictable spike in need every school holiday, exactly the gap that the school holiday food grant once addressed, and expressed its deep regret that that scheme had ended. It told me of an eight-year-old girl who receives free school meals during term time. With her mum working part-time, the loss of the holiday payment means an additional £20 to £30 weekly food bill. The result is meal rationing and snacks being stopped. Atlas Women's Centre stressed that universal free school meals would ease pressures on families at a time when food banks are overwhelmed and community groups are stretched far beyond their capacity. It emphasised the need to reduce stigma and to ensure that no child is made to feel different because of their family's income. The evidence supports what those organisations have told us. The free school meals pilot in England showed significant improvements in attainment: the equivalent of four to eight additional weeks of progress at Key Stages 1 and 2. That must be one of the most cost-effective education interventions on these islands.

Minister, if you are serious about raising standards, tackling underachievement and giving every child a fair start, universal free school meals must be part of that vision. The motion calls on the Minister to work with the Minister of Finance to develop and:

That is ambitious — perhaps too ambitious — but ambition is what our children need.

Mr Carroll: Across the North, there are over 100,000 children living in poverty, and one third of the children in my constituency of West Belfast live in poverty. That is absolutely unacceptable and immoral. The proposed 20% increase to the cost of school meals will only harm the families in poverty and on low incomes who are not eligible for free school meals. As Members have stated, only 59% of children in poverty are eligible for free school meals. That means that 41% of children living in poverty are being denied free school meals simply because they do not count and do not matter.

Alarmingly, the number of families eligible for free school meals and uniform grants over the past two years has fallen by 3,000. That has not only exacerbated the conditions faced by working-class families in my constituency and elsewhere but put immense pressure on food banks, which those families depend on more and more, year after year. The level of reliance on food banks to meet people's basic needs is totally immoral and unsustainable, and it cannot continue. The universal provision of free school meals would be a far more effective and efficient approach than means testing. It would alleviate the pressures on working-class families and provide a far broader group of children with a nutritious meal each day. That is the bare minimum of what is necessary for children to stay focused and learn. Alongside that, it would be beneficial — ideal, really — to introduce sustainably sourced school meals that support local food production and reduce food waste.

Universal free school meal provision is entirely feasible. It has been introduced in Sweden and Wales. Until universal provision is achieved, there should, as a bare minimum, be a price cap on school meals to provide support to the children who need it most. In addition, the holiday hunger grant, which was first introduced in the North during the COVID pandemic, should be immediately reinstated. The Member for West Belfast Danny Baker is proposing to do that through a PMB that we will support. Over 100,000 children benefited from those payments. We cannot allow working-class children to go hungry over the holiday period, and we will not accept the excuse that the money simply is not there. To those who say that the money is not there or that it is utopian, I say the contrary. The wealth of the world's billionaires grew by $2 trillion — $5·7 billion per day — in 2024, and we have the cheek and the nerve to say that there is not money for free school meal provision. Pull the other one.

We tell working-class families that they must pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as they struggle to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. Poverty among children and pupils is a choice. The Executive must choose whether they will opt in or opt out. I support the motion.

Mr Givan (The Minister of Education): First, I welcome the opportunity to respond to the motion on free school meals provision. I start by recognising that school meals play a vital role in supporting children and young people's learning and health. A nutritionally balanced and healthy lunch helps pupils to concentrate and be in the best position to learn. That, in turn, helps with their well-being, development and educational outcomes. However, let us be clear: the benefits of a nutritious school meal extend to all pupils, irrespective of whether it is free.

Currently, around 90,000 pupils are able to access a free school meal each day. That support is targeted towards those who are most in need: children and young people from low-income families, to whom that support can make a real difference.

Free school meal entitlement is largely based on households being in receipt of relevant benefits. The Education Authority actively continues to support families who choose to apply for those benefits through the free school meal application process to ensure that their children can access free school meals as easily as possible.

Over the summer, my officials completed a review of the eligibility criteria for free school meals. I took the decision to raise the income threshold for those on universal credit to £15,390. For the first time, I have ensured that the threshold will automatically increase in future years in line with consumer price inflation. In making my decision, I recognised the importance of free school meals to many low-income families. I also took into account the views expressed during the public consultation, in which there was broad support for increasing access to free school meals, including universal provision. Of course, I would welcome the opportunity to introduce universal provision, but the budgetary constraints that my Department and the wider Executive face mean that that is not achievable at this stage.

I listened to the Minister of Finance speak on Saturday. He talked about the Assembly and the Executive having to get real and take big decisions about raising finances. I say this to Members: while the motion, aspirational as it is in nature, no doubt has merit, Members need to get real. When Members table such a motion — a motion that would lead to costs well in excess of £150 million — it adds to the cynicism that the public have about the institutions. We know that it is not achievable —

Ms Hunter: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: — in the short or medium term owing to the pressures that exist.

I will give way to the Member: the very Member who proposed the motion but has been absent from the Chamber for the past half an hour. I will give way to her, despite her not having been in the Chamber for the past while.

Ms Hunter: God forbid that a woman use the bathroom, Minister. I certainly was not gone for half an hour. It was a matter of minutes.

Let me be clear: I am an SDLP MLA who has been elected to the House to advocate for children. I will be cold and dead in the ground before I do not use my platform to put to the House the right of children —

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Ms Hunter —

Ms Hunter: — to be fed.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): — an intervention, please, not a polemic.

Ms Hunter: That is my intervention.

Minister, I understand that you face financial pressures, but it is our moral and professional duty to bring the issue to the House and to put it to you, as the Minister of Education, that starving children have the right to be heard and that under-pressure families have the right to be listened to.

I categorically state that I was not gone for half an hour. Thank you.

Mr Givan: The Member has given her explanation. In response to her points, I say this to the Opposition: if you are to be taken seriously, you have to table motions that are fully costed and that highlight to the public the services that you will cut to deliver what is proposed. What is in the motion outlines —.

Ms Hunter: That is your job.

Mr Givan: The Member says that that is my job. That is exactly the problem with the Opposition: they do not see it as their job to act responsibly. [Inaudible.]

Mr Givan: Unfortunately or, indeed, fortunately —.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Members, there is to be no chuntering from a sedentary position. [Inaudible.]

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): We do not do that. Not when I am in the Chair. Over to you, Minister.

Mr Givan: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Opposition need to bring forward fully costed proposals. They need to act responsibly and speak to the public about the real-world consequences of motions such as this, if its proposals were to be introduced.

Universal provision would mean multimillionaires in our society getting free school meals for their children. If we were to take a universal approach, it would not be targeted at the most needy. If we were in a position to make universal provision available, who would not want to give everybody everything for free?

Is the priority the universal provision of free school meals? That would mean multimillionaires' children getting a free school meal, as opposed to just the most vulnerable in our society, such as children who are struggling, working families who are struggling and children with special educational needs, for whom significant investment is required. I published a plan that requires £570 million over the next five years to help children with special additional needs. If your preference is universal provision for multimillionaires as opposed to those young people, I will say this to the Opposition: you have got your priorities completely wrong.

Mr O'Toole: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: I am not going to give way to the Member. I have given way to the Member twice.

Ms Hunter: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: I have given way to the Member as well. I am not going to give way again. The Opposition have done enough damage with the position that they have outlined today. Let me make some more progress on outlining my response.

What cuts to the heart of the issue is the value of school meals to children, and I agree with that. However, unlike the official Opposition and some other Members, I do not have the luxury of being able to virtue-signal on it. I deal with the financial realities of the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be. My Department and the wider education sector are under severe financial strain and face a significant budget shortfall this year. I can only make affordable changes, and, unfortunately, a significant expansion of access to free school meals is not affordable and is unlikely to be so in the time ahead. We face unavoidable cost pressures and rising service demands that the current budget does not meet. It would, therefore, be irresponsible for me as a Minister to commit to expanding access to free school meals in that financial context.

Mr Allen: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Givan: I will give way, yes.

Mr Allen: In his earlier remarks, the Minister highlighted the increase in the threshold from £15,000 to £15,390 for those in receipt of universal credit. Will he inform the House how he arrived at that increase?

Mr Givan: The rise that we provided and that I took the decision on was based on the consumer price inflation index, and we linked that to the automatic increases that will take place. That is the rationale for our approach.

We offer more support, rightly so, than other parts of the United Kingdom. They have indicated, however, that they wish to expand the support and, ultimately, try to get to universal provision. However, as it stands today in Northern Ireland, we provide levels of support that are not available elsewhere. I am, of course, concerned that, as other jurisdictions make progress on the issue, we will be left behind. I highlight to Members that, if we are going to do this, it will require additional resources, and that has implications for the current services that we provide. It is not unreasonable for me to ask those who advocate it this question: what would you do if you were in my position? What priority would you place on universal free school meals in comparison with the many other pressures that exist in the Department of Education?

The official Opposition can, of course, table aspirational motions such as this, and we can all support and agree with the sentiment that is behind them, but, as Minister, I must ensure that any policy changes are financially sustainable and practically deliverable. Unfortunately, the proposals in the Opposition motion are neither. I am fully aware of the evolving nature of free school meal entitlement in England, Scotland and Wales, and I have spoken to the approach that they are taking and where I want us to get to. However, as other Members mentioned during the debate, the financial reality is stark. As a result of the Education Authority having an overcommitment in excess of £280 million this year on inescapable and pre-committed pressures, the resources are simply not available to me to expand access to free school meals.

Today's motion and a number of Members referenced the school holiday food grant scheme, and, similarly, the issues that I have highlighted pertain to that. The motion asks the:

to develop the plan. I am happy to work with the Finance Minister. However, I will point colleagues, including those in his party, to the comments that the Finance Minister made only last weekend about the financial pressures that face the Executive. We should be honest with the public about the financial choices that need to be made and about the realities that we in the Department of Education have to deal with. I will continue to prioritise those who require support, but the first priority has always been children with special educational needs. They are my priority. Universal provision for multimillionaires' kids and families is not my priority. It may be the priority and aspiration for others in the House, but it is not mine.

Mr Durkan: As we draw the debate to a close, I want to bring us back to the heart of what today is or should be about. It is about children and the basic right to food, not party interests, not posing or posturing, not budget spreadsheets but ensuring that children have access to a healthy, nutritious meal, if the Minister was listening. The sad reality is that far too many do not — he obviously is not.

Welfare reform, designed by the Tories and delivered here by the DUP, Sinn Féin and Alliance, has seen a 143% increase in food bank usage in the past five years. The approach of the Christmas period now heralds food bank drives and collections for community fridges, demand for which has soared year-on-year. I have never seen so many people in need of the basics.

As we have heard today, one in five children living in poverty in the North does not qualify for a free school meal. Twenty per cent of the poorest children here are excluded by policy design. Working families and low-income families were better off under the legacy tax credit system. They got a wee bit more bang for their buck in a system where the welfare safety net could catch them when they fell, when the cost of living was lower and when parents could access school meal support and uniform grants more readily. All that was stripped away almost overnight when people were moved on to universal credit. The entitlement threshold, as we have heard from the Minister — his colleagues congratulate him for it — is increasing from £15,000 to almost £15,400, but prior to that, it had been slashed from £16,000 to £14,000. How is anyone meant to square that?

Mr Middleton: I thank the Member for giving way. The Member mentioned my comments and the Minister's comments. Will the Member agree that it would have been better for the proposer of the motion to have listened entirely to the Minister's response, rather than leaving the Chamber to do a media interview?

Mr Durkan: Will the Member agree that neither he nor the Minister listened to the first 45 seconds of my speech? They seemed to be deeply engrossed. I do not know what their obsession is with what my colleague was doing, be she the proposer or otherwise.

Mr Givan: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, is it in order for a Member to give one explanation as to why they were not in the Chamber, only for it to be found that they were actually conducting a media interview outside the Chamber? She did not give that as a reason. Is it in order for the Member to have said what she said in respect of that? Can she verify whether she was out of the Chamber doing media interviews? [Interruption.]

Were you doing media interviews? [Interruption.]

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Will the Minister resume his seat? Your point has been made. It is there for the record.

Mr Durkan, please resume your winding-up speech.

Mr Durkan: It takes some brass neck for someone to question the reason that someone gives for being somewhere or not being somewhere, given the reasons that they gave for being in occupied territory recently against international law. [Interruption.]

Sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.]

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Members, please. Let us not have chuntering from sedentary positions. I want to listen to what Mr Durkan is going to say. I was even going to admire his new Movember moustache.

Mr Durkan, please continue with your winding-up speech. Other Members, please stop chuntering.

Mr Durkan: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It shows the Minister's interest in hungry children when he clearly does not want to listen to what I have to say. It might not be that interesting, to be fair, but he is more interested in the toileting of my female colleague. What a weirdo.

It is borne out by figures, Mr Deputy Speaker —

Mr Givan: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Mr Durkan: — with 3,000 fewer children entitled to school meal support in just two years —

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Mr Durkan, please resume your seat.

Members, can we return to talking about the motion? [Interruption.]

Mr Durkan, it is back to you.

Mr Durkan: Now, where were we?

That is borne out by the figures, with 3,000 fewer children entitled to school meals support than was the case just over two years ago. Frustratingly, the four-week assessment period for universal credit here means that people are ineligible one month and maybe eligible the next. On top of that, there has been a 20% increase in the cost of school meals. Families already wiped out by increasing household bills are now forced to pay more for the most basic ingredient of learning, which is a full stomach.

The Minister has outlined the more generous eligibility criteria here but has acknowledged that this region will begin to lag behind other regions on these islands. Scotland has universal meals for primary-school children; Wales is rolling out universal provision; and England is expanding access to all universal credit claimants. Here, however, thresholds have tightened, despite the Minister's efforts and claims. Fewer children are being supported than was the case a couple of years ago, and meal costs are rising.

Last week, during the cost-of-living debate, we raised a lot of similar talking points, such as poverty, food insecurity, holiday hunger and the plight of working families on universal credit. We talked about our underpaid public servants, including Education Authority staff, health workers and civil servants, whose delayed pay rises and back pay are pushing them into debt. That is money that they have earned but cannot access under the current welfare system. That is not a problem for a single Department; it is cross-departmental and requires cooperation. Yet, while the Finance Minister assured me in the Chamber last week that he would work with his Executive colleagues to find a solution, when I followed up in writing, his response was, "Not me, it is the Health Minister's responsibility." I wrote to the Health Minister, who cited a bad budget. Let me be clear: it appears that the Executive do not value their own workers — the poorest workers, at that — enough to even cooperate. That is an abdication of responsibility.

This is a cross-cutting issue and will require collaboration, but how can we count on Ministers to do that, especially when the Education Minister does not even view other Ministers as partners? The people who are paying the price are the people who keep our schools running, our hospitals open and our communities going, the people who have been stripped of support under the new threshold for free school meals and will now be hit by a 20% increase.

Mr Carroll: Will the Member give way?

Mr Durkan: Certainly.

Mr Carroll: Despite the Minister's attempt at deflection and all sorts of red herrings, does the Member agree that there is a cost to not implementing free school meals, insofar as there are financial as well as health, emotional, social and other impacts on children and young people?

Mr Durkan: The cost of not doing this affects the more vulnerable children, not the children of multimillionaires. There are not too many of them. People do not have to opt in to this; they can make their own choices.

There is a huge immeasurable cost. Where does the money come from for free school meals provision? That is the big question that the Minister and others have asked, and it is a fair question. This Minister, however, is not averse to coming here to outline ambitious and grandiose plans with absolutely no indication of where the money is coming from. The childcare strategy, anyone? The capital builds programme, announcing new schools that we will never see. The SEN programme, which is his priority — £1·5 billion. He is the Minister, and we are the Opposition, but he is raising expectations, including among families of children with special educational needs.

In response to a recent question for oral answer, the Minister told my colleague, Daniel McCrossan, that he estimated a cost of £142 million for the introduction of universal free school meals. That had gone up by £60 million to £202 million by the time Mr Middleton spoke but went back down by the time the Minister spoke. He cannot accuse us of not doing costings when his costings are all over the place.

We do not see this happening overnight. It is about setting out our stall and our direction of travel and taking a staggered approach. Let us start with the younger years — primary schools first — because early intervention is crucial, guaranteeing a healthy start and offering meals to those who need them, while recognising that not every family will want to take up the offer. The key is to make it an option and to remove any stigma early on.

I commend the motion. I regret very much how this has gone, but, as is the way with the Education Minister, he just cannot help himself, or anyone else.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Members, please take your ease while we change the personnel at the top Table, before we move on to the next item.

Mr McGlone: Molaim an rún

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have five minutes to propose and five minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. Two amendments have been selected and are published on the Marshalled List, so the Business Committee has agreed that 16 minutes will be added to the total time for the debate. Patsy, please open the debate on the motion.

Mr McGlone: Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

The SDLP has tabled the motion on policing resources because of our concerns about the impact of the consistent under-resourcing of policing. At the start of the debate, I wish to put on record my and my party's support for the police, and I thank those officers who work in often very difficult circumstances without the resources that they need and deserve to have available to them.

In 1999, the Patten report stated that we needed a police service with 7,500 officers. At the start of October this year, almost 25 years since the establishment of the PSNI, there were only 6,223 full-time officers. In 2020, the parties in the Executive gave a commitment to increase the number of police officers to finally match the figure in that Patten report. However, sufficient additional funding was not provided to enable the target to be achieved, and, when numbers rose to a high of 7,100 officers, the additional funding that had been provided fell away and the additional police numbers fell away with it. It is not that efforts have not been made in the past; those efforts just have not been sustained. Overall, there has been long-term underfunding of the criminal justice system. That is the result of decisions made by successive DUP/Sinn Féin-led Executives over successive years, and, as a result of those decisions, the PSNI is under-resourced and the officers and staff are consistently under extraordinary pressure.

Just over a year ago, the Assembly declared its support for the Chief Constable in his campaign to secure additional resources for the PSNI. The Assembly re-endorsed the recommendation in the Patten report that the number of full-time police officers should be 7,500, with the ambition of increasing that number. In January, the PSNI said that it needed £200 million over five years to increase its workforce to 7,000 officers from its current all-time low. That would still be 500 fewer than the Patten figure from 1999. To date, the Executive have given no firm commitments or guarantees that the required funding will be delivered or that the funding will be sustained over that five-year period. Indeed, funding has yet to be secured for the police pay award this year. The Treasury has repeatedly refused to pay the compensation bill for the PSNI officers who were affected by the major data breach in August 2023. We still await the legislative consent motion for the new legacy arrangement because of the additional cost to the Justice Minister's Department. While the Justice Minister has, unlike the Health Minister, ruled out overspending her budget, the Finance Minister predicted this week that the Executive will overspend their budget this year by £400 million. That is the background to the motion.

Our motion also refers to the recent report from the Police Ombudsman on the handling of a high-profile child sex offender case. It is a disturbing report on a very disturbing case. The ombudsman's report found that the PSNI teams tasked with detecting and investigating online child sexual abuse were under-resourced and under pressure, which significantly compromised their ability to detect and prosecute offenders and keep children safe.

In the case that was the subject of the ombudsman's report, the offender was first arrested in February 2016. He was interviewed by police and released on bail. It was more than two years later before he was interviewed again, in May 2018, about 1,100 indecent images of children being found on his phone and other devices, which had been seized in 2016. That delay was due to the time taken for the PSNI to produce evidential reports on the images. In those two years, he continued to engage in abusive online communications involving at least seven other children. He was on police bail throughout that time. He was arrested in March 2018, after the PSNI received information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By April 2019, he had been arrested for a third time, after Police Scotland alerted the PSNI to his consistent and continued offending. Reports on four devices seized in March 2018 had still not been completed when he was arrested for a fourth time, on 30 July 2019. Just five days before a police interview in May 2018, a 12-year-old girl whom he had targeted — Cimarron Thomas, from West Virginia in the United States — took her own life after he had contacted her. In January 2020, Cimarron's father, Benjamin Jay Thomas, also took his own life. Finally, in October 2024, the person responsible for those crimes was convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison.

It is important to note that the ombudsman's investigation identified no misconduct whatsoever by any individual police officer. The ombudsman found that under-resourcing resulted in the delayed police enquiries and the ineffective management of the offender's bail conditions. The investigators found that there were significant pressures on the PSNI team responsible for investigating online offending involving children and indecent images. They found that sufficient investment was not allocated to reduce those investigative delays.

Mr Beattie: I beg to move amendment No 1:

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Doug. You have five minutes in which to propose the amendment and three minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. Please open the debate on amendment No 1.

Mr Beattie: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. The protection and safeguarding of our citizens must be the main priority for the police, the Assembly and the Department of Justice. The findings of the Police Ombudsman regarding Alexander McCartney's online child sex offences are concerning and outline grave failings. The motion is right to outline the lack of police capacity and capability in that area, and that is a resource issue. The report also found that there were serious delays in the investigation due to the backlog in the PSNI cybercrime centre, which is where the police forensically interrogate electronic devices. Again, that is due to a lack of resource — funding — and it creates a direct risk to victims.

There were other issues, the first of which is bail. The bail conditions given to that individual were weak. That man was still allowed to go online even though that is where he carried out all his abuse. The police carried out cursory checks only. I have seen some bail conditions that are absolutely scandalous. That is an area that needs to be looked at. Allowing him to go online during the investigation is staggering. The second issue is prioritisation. In 2018, at the heart of the investigation, the priorities were paramilitarism and serious organised crime as opposed to online child exploitation. Of course, paramilitarism and organised crime are extremely serious, but to prioritise them over online child exploitation is difficult to stand over. Of course, that is an operational matter for the PSNI and the cybercrime unit, but the strategic oversight still sits with the Chief Constable and the Department of Justice, with the latter giving policy direction. The PSNI has now moved to a threat, harm, risk, investigation, vulnerability and engagement (THRIVE) model to rectify disproportionate prioritisation of paramilitarism over child exploitation, but, yet again, the PSNI is unable to do that fully unless it gets the resource. Again, resource means funding, and the Minister has said that many times.

On the wider implications of violence against women and girls, I share the motion's concerns and have raised them on multiple occasions. Remember that politicians are the legislators, the police are the investigators, the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) is the prosecutor and the courts give the verdict and sentences. I have genuine concerns — I know that the Minister will disagree with me — about how, in order to speed up justice, cases are going to the Magistrates' Court instead of the Crown Court. That is a particular issue for non-fatal strangulation cases, where victims are predominantly women and girls. In 2023-24, there were 344 cases of non-fatal strangulation, of which 329 went to the Magistrates' Court and only 15 went to the Crown Court. Of the total cases, only 20% resulted in a custodial sentence. That is not an issue for the Minister but for the courts and the PPS. However, it is worthwhile mentioning that.

Our amendment brings a bit of reality to the issue of police resourcing and asks important questions. First, the money has not been made available for the workforce recovery plan, which was first agreed in June 2025, having been submitted in January 2025. We are already behind with our workforce recovery. Bearing in mind that about 300 to 400 —.

Mrs Long (The Minister of Justice): Will the Member give way?

Mr Beattie: I just do not have time, Minister. Sorry.

Bearing in mind that about 300 to 400 officers leave the service each year, we are down to 6,200 officers. Listen and remember this figure: only about 4,500 officers are deployable. That is all: 4,500 officers are deployable. How have we allowed that to happen? A lack of funding, a lack of prioritisation, a lack of scrutiny and a lack of strategic questions and honest answers. Police numbers continue to fall, so the simple question for the Minister is this: is the three-year target achievable? Is it still viable? If the answer is yes, the Minister can give us achievable measures. When will we hit 6,500 officers? When will we hit 6,750 officers? Alternatively, if the answer is no, which it may be at the moment, not because of any fault on the Minister's part but because we have not provided the resource, what will we do about it? Those are important questions, which is why I have added them as an amendment to this very important motion.

Mrs Dillon: I beg to move amendment No 2:

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Assembly should note that the amendments are mutually exclusive, so, if amendment No 1 is made, the Question will not be put on amendment No 2. Linda, you have five minutes to propose and three minutes to make a winding-up speech. I remind all other Members that they will have three minutes. Linda, proceed with your proposing of amendment No 2.

Mrs Dillon: Although resourcing pressures absolutely and undeniably affect policing capacity, the debate cannot simply be about the numbers of police and staff. It must also be about how priorities are set, how responsibilities are shared and how the wider system responds to vulnerability, risk and harm, as the Member who spoke previously outlined.

The ombudsman's report on the handling of the case of the high-profile child sex offender Alexander McCartney was deeply alarming. Members have spoken about the fact that there were at least two deaths as a result of how the case was handled. Those are only the children and young people whom we know about, however. Many children and young people whom we will never know about were affected by the actions of Alexander McCartney. Our thoughts therefore need to be with all those families.

That case highlighted not only the gaps in PSNI capacity but the consequences when risk is not managed effectively. There were serious delays in the case's being fully investigated, because the PSNI made choices about the use of resources, choosing to prioritise organised crime and paramilitarism over violence against women and children. The report's findings carry profound implications for the safeguarding of children and for our collective ambition to tackle violence against women and children. The PSNI had a strategy in place, so, in fairness to it, it was ahead of the curve. It had a strategy for tackling violence against women and girls before the Executive and the Assembly had one, but from such a strategy must flow the prioritisation of resources, and that is not what happened in that case.

If we are serious about addressing the challenges, I recognise that we need to take a cross-departmental approach, because policing alone cannot solve societal failures. The PSNI cannot continue to pick up from the point at which other services have failed and be expected to respond to everything: people's mental health crises; children in care in distress; people with acute vulnerabilities; and gaps left by overstretched Departments and services. Although the PSNI must always be available to ensure that people are kept safe, the Right Care, Right Person approach must be fully implemented to ensure the best outcome for all our people. When they need help, the right person must respond to those individuals. The Right Care, Right Person model must ensure that the right professional, not just the available professional, responds to the issue in hand, and that places a responsibility on the Department of Health and the Department of Education. In fact, it places a responsibility on every one of our Departments.

A child in a foster care placement who is struggling should be met first by a social worker, not by a police officer. A person who is in mental health distress should be met with clinical expertise, not with a uniform. Yes, it is about resources, but it is not only about resources. It is about how those resources are used and allocated. It is about ensuring that we do not default to the police when it is other agencies that should be leading.

The Department of Justice must lead on a collective vision for policing and justice. That vision must recognise that harm occurs across systems, that responses must be joined up and that resourcing pressures are not limited to the PSNI. Given the rise in mental health-related cases, the rise in neurodiverse people coming into contact with the system and the rise in increasingly complex investigations, the Office of the Police Ombudsman also requires the capacity and specialist support to carry out its vital work. Proper oversight is not a luxury but an essential part of creating public confidence.

Our amendment rebalances the conversation. It recognises that, although funding is crucial, we must work towards taking a smarter, more coordinated and more humane approach: one that keeps women and girls safe, supports vulnerable people and ensures that policing is focused on where it makes the greatest difference.

We will not be supporting the UUP amendment, and not because there is anything wrong with it. It is a good amendment, with which we have no issue, but our amendment is important, as it is about accountability and how the finite resources that are available to the PSNI are used. During Members' statements this morning, Members across the Chamber talked about how today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. If they mean what they say, they should support our amendment. I ask that everybody in the House support it.

Mr Clarke: I am not sure that I can add much to what has already been said. It sounds a bit like a rehearsal of the debate that we have been having over this past two to three years about resourcing issues for the police. I put on record, however, my recognition of the work that the Department of Justice, the Executive and others have done to recognise the underfunded position in which policing finds itself. In saying that, we are disappointed that the finances have not come from the Department of Finance. However, there is a commitment from the Executive to fund the police in the recovery plan. We do not know what that will look like in the next two to three years, but it will certainly be in the recovery plan for this year.

The motion from the Opposition party is a wee bit opportunistic in the way that it has been drafted and in some of its content, because none of us needed to wait for a report from the ombudsman to see the state that policing is in. We all know from different areas in policing the pressures that it faces. It is interesting that we are focusing on one aspect of that today, but the one thing that we all see in our communities day and daily is front-line policing through neighbourhood policing, which is where we all want to see policing get to.

We are, obviously, minded to support the Ulster Unionist Party amendment. We are not against the amendment in the names of Linda and others from Sinn Féin, but it is difficult in that it emphasises one part of policing without recognising all its parts. That is in the line that states that we must "prioritise" issues facing women and girls over everything else. How can we decide today which one area of policing is more important than others?

Mrs Dillon: Will the Member take an intervention?

Mr Clarke: I will.

Mrs Dillon: The wording is "must ... prioritise ... more effectively". That should not, and we have never said that it should, be prioritised over organised crime and paramilitaries. It should be prioritised more effectively.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Clarke: I accept that, and, for the record, I am happy to say that that is what the amendment says. However, it implies that we should look at one side of policing as opposed to all of it. As the Member for Upper Bann said, we have 4,500 police officers available on a daily basis, effectively, so how can we emphasise one area of policing without looking at it in its totality?

I will go back to where I started this conversation. The pause on recruitment has been lifted. We need more responsible conversation from the Opposition and others. They come along with wonderful wish lists of everything that they want to do, but if there were a big case for funding for police today, would they get behind it? What would they substitute policing for so that there could be spending on policing that would allow us to get to the number that we require, which is 7,500? Always being left off that 7,500 is the provision of 2,500 Reserve officers, which was a Good Friday Agreement commitment. That would also help to address the overtime pressures that policing faces, because there would be flexibility to scale numbers up and down at short notice.

As I said, we are minded to support amendment No 1. We have a less favourable view of amendment No 2, because of the prioritisation of that issue. Let me say this, however: we all need to be honest about and careful what we wish for. I have been defending policing for some time, and I will defend the current Chief Constable, as, indeed, I did the previous Chief Constable, making the calls for additional finance. While those conversations were going on, every other Department was putting pressure on Finance to get money. At some stage, we will have to be mature and say, "We need to give something up, because we recognise that policing numbers are at an all-time low". We will have to ask, "What will another Department go without?", and then offer that money to the Finance Department to allow policing to be resourced.

Mr Tennyson: I thank the Member for giving way. I agree with much of his contribution about the need for a whole-Executive approach. Does he believe that his colleague the Education Minister has been adopting that approach to his finances?

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Time is up, Trevor, even with your extra minute. You are way over three minutes.

Mr Clarke: Was that three minutes?

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Yes, and you got an extra minute. Just so others know, it is not fair to ask for interventions when time is so short. OK, Trevor? Sorry about that. I call Connie Egan.

Mr Tennyson: Sorry, Trevor.

Ms Egan: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I will be as quick as I can with the time that has been allocated.

In speaking to the Opposition motion, I will give particular regard to the Police Ombudsman's investigation into the handling of the devastating child abuse case and the need for collaborative steps to be taken across the Chamber and by our Executive to support the full resourcing and recovery of our Police Service. The latter is vital to ensuring that the extreme harm that was endured by the estimated 3,500 children who were targeted by that predator is prevented from ever happening to another individual. That case could be progressed only due to the bravery of the young girls, whose testimonies made it possible. They are nothing short of inspirational. I think in particular of Cimarron Thomas, a young girl who died by suicide following contact with and subsequent abuse by that predator.

The findings of the Police Ombudsman's investigation are extremely concerning, as is the growing proliferation of online sexual abuse. In February 2025, the NSPCC revealed that crimes involving images of child sexual abuse have risen by 98% over the past five years. Much of that illegal material is being repeatedly shared and viewed online. Online sexual abuse, particularly with regard to children, is a growing problem.

The Alliance Party shares the concerns that are expressed in the motion about the need for greater funding to support police recruitment and workforce recovery. Those concerns have been echoed most vocally by our Justice Minister. I am sure that she will reflect on that in her comments. I know the work that she is doing to support recruitment and retention of police officers. That case is a grave reminder that crime that is committed on a device that is connected to the internet can just as easily create serious hurt across the world as it can to the person next door. The debate feels particularly relevant as, today, we mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, of which the theme is "#NoExcuse for online abuse". Ultimately, while that case may have opened in 2016, as the motion recognises, its lengthy timeline and shortcomings are still incredibly relevant learnings for today. I want us all to work towards a society where everyone is safe and respected, whether that is in public places, at home, in the community or online.

Mr K Buchanan: We are united in our determination to build a Police Service of Northern Ireland that is open to every section of society. However, let us also be honest: the ombudsman's recent report makes harrowing reading. It lays bare the tragic consequences of under-resourcing our Police Service. A prolific abuser was able to operate online, and a young child lost her life. That failure must never be repeated.

The PSNI cannot do that alone. It must work with the Executive, the Secretary of State, the National Crime Agency and others. However, collaboration without capacity is meaningless. Staffing remains a fundamental issue. Without sufficient officers and staff, the PSNI cannot meet public expectations. Recruitment must be based on merit. It must be based on ability, not religious background, gender or orientation. That principle is fundamental to fairness and public confidence. Whether it is for tackling violence against women and girls, as previously mentioned, and as stated in amendment No 2, safeguarding vulnerable people, fighting organised crime or maintaining community policing, we commend the Chief Constable's detailed workforce recovery plan for those things and others, but approval is not enough; funding must be delivered. Since the restoration of the Executive in 2024, police numbers have continued to decline. Chronic underfunding has real-world consequences. Crime becomes harder to tackle when officer numbers fall. The Chief Constable rightly took his concerns to the Prime Minister. As accounting officer, he is entitled — indeed, it could be argued that he is obliged — to seek resources at the highest level.

The facts are stark. Between 2010 and 2022, police budgets in England and Wales rose by 20%. In Northern Ireland, the PSNI budget fell slightly and, in real terms, declined by 36% due to inflation. Despite the Northern Ireland block grant's growing since 2010, the police budget has dropped from £903 million to £892 million. That erosion of priority inevitably comes at a cost to services. The PSNI has statutory obligations to protect life and property, maintain law and order, prevent crime and bring offenders to justice. It also faces the ongoing threat from dissident republicans. Without adequate resources, those obligations cannot be met.

We stand with the Chief Constable in his call for investment to rebuild officer numbers and secure a visible, accessible, community-focused service. Our officers put their lives at risk daily. They deserve not just gratitude but the resources to do their job properly. There is no time for delay. A fully staffed police force is in all our best interests. The Assembly must make that case with one voice.

Miss McAllister: I thank the proposer of the motion. It is an opportunity to have a good debate in the Chamber. It is great to see that everyone is getting along so well. It is almost as though everyone had their Weetabix this morning and a good lunch.

Funding and resourcing the police is an important issue because it is about the safety of our community and the people whom we all represent in the Chamber. I want to recognise the comments that were made by the proposer of the motion and, indeed, by other Members in the Chamber.

The funding of the Department of Justice and, ultimately, the Police Service is inadequate. It is simply not good enough. That is not for want of trying by our Minister in the Executive or, to be honest, our Executive as a whole at this time with the UK Government. We need to reflect on the fact that this is on the UK Government as well. We also need to be realistic about the fact that the Department of Justice's entire budget has fallen while other Departments have seen an upward trajectory in theirs. Things have to change.

It is timely that we are having this discussion on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism. An important part of tackling violence against women and girls is ensuring that the community is safe and that, where that safety fails and crimes are committed, we have police action and an overall criminal justice system to take that action. I recognise the many steps that the Justice Minister took in the previous mandate to introduce new offences that became tools for the PSNI to use. I think, for example, of coercive or controlling behaviour, an offence introduced in the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act 2021. We have seen 747 recorded instances of that. In the same period, there have been 201 recorded instances of stalking, which is another offence introduced in the previous mandate, and 91 instances of image-based sexual abuse. Those are just a few of the tools that the police can use —

Mr Burrows: Will the Member give way?

Miss McAllister: There is not enough time. Sorry.

— to tackle violence against women and girls.

I turn to the case of Alexander McCartney. It is right to point out that there were failures because of policing resources, which led to the gaps between the first, second and third arrests, resulting in the death of young Cimarron. I convey my sympathies to her family. Online sex offences against children are scary, and we need to prioritise them. However, let us be honest: if resource is an issue, we have to have a serious conversation about the way in which the police use their resources in Northern Ireland. It is not their fault; it is the fault of many people in Northern Ireland. That is something that Alliance is serious about tackling and something that we all need to prioritise.

Ms Brownlee: I support the motion. Grave concerns are felt on these Benches following the ombudsman's report. There are also concerns about police resourcing and the handling of one of the most horrific high-profile sex offender cases behind a computer screen that there has been in Northern Ireland. That sick man ruined countless people's lives. As we discuss this important matter today, my thoughts are with all those who are impacted by what we discuss and all those who have been impacted by that type of crime.

The report's findings are stark, and the ombudsman has confirmed what many of us already knew: the PSNI simply did not have enough capability or capacity to manage the risk posed by a highly dangerous child sex offender. That failure has had devastating consequences for victims and their families. I am sure that there is no one in the House who is comfortable with that. What happened in that case was not just a procedural weakness; it was the fundamental collapse of a system that should exist first and foremost to protect the most vulnerable: our children. The PSNI has acknowledged those failures, but, of course, words of acknowledgement are not enough. The truth is that, for too long, the service has been under-resourced, understaffed and stretched beyond what is acceptable. It is good to get collaborative agreement today. Our Police Service is there to support and protect us, but it has not been funded in the way in which it should have been. Nowhere is that pressure more evident than in tackling online child exploitation and abuse. It was absolutely heartbreaking, as a parent, to read the story in the ombudsman's report. Nobody could read that and not be truly devastated that that happened in Northern Ireland.

Recent reports have also reinforced the fact that crimes involving child sexual abuse have almost doubled in the past five years. Officers are now dealing with an explosion of online offending, with increasingly sophisticated digital platforms being used to target children. They are difficult for the PSNI to engage with and even get responses from in some cases. The dedicated teams dealing with those threats are working with limited manpower and specialist capability and with delays that are not compatible with protecting our children. To be absolutely clear, we support a proper, sustainable policing budget, not sticking plasters or one-off allocations. We cannot talk about protecting our young people in this complex and dangerous digital age if we do not —.

Mr Clarke: I thank the Member for giving way. She talks about the systems that are there to protect those people, but does she agree that one thing that goes missing from those conversations is that there is no system to protect the officers who view that material daily and that an under-resourced police force makes it even worse for those men and women?

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Ms Brownlee: Thank you, and thank you to the Member. As members of the Policing Board, we visited and saw the environment that the officers were working in. Clearly, the PSNI is trying to support those officers as much as possible, but the images that they see daily are having an extremely negative effect on their mental well-being. It is extremely difficult for any officer to be in that environment, and we heard about the high staff sickness rates because of what people have to endure.

Today's motion really matters, and I welcome it. It sends a clear message about safeguarding our children: it is not optional; it is our duty. It sends a message that we need to identify the gaps and prioritise with real investment and recruitment. On these Benches, we will continue to press the case in the House, with the Executive and, of course, with the UK Government and to support the Chief Constable in his pursuit, because no child in Northern Ireland should ever be at risk because the system meant to protect them simply does not have enough people or enough support.

Mr Chambers: There is an old cautionary saying: you get what you pay for. The motion highlights the fact that the PSNI did not have the capacity or available resource to manage the risk posed by a child sex offender in a recent, high-profile case that had hundreds of victims across the world and led to a young girl in America tragically taking her own life due to the activities of a twisted and evil member of our society.

We complain about the lack of police officers, and we watch as the Chief Constable tries his best to secure the budget that he needs to properly police Northern Ireland by breaking many established administrative conventions and processes to achieve his goal. I admire his tenacity but feel that the Assembly has failed him and his officers. As per my opening sentence, we are getting exactly what we have paid for: a police service that is so underfunded and, consequently, seriously under-resourced that many serious crimes will not be investigated or solved in the target timescale that the PSNI would like to meet.

The Patten report on policing, written 25 years ago, recommended 7,500 full-time officers and 2,500 part-time and locally recruited reservists. The reserve element has just been ignored and is never mentioned in current debates. As a proud member of the part-time RUC Reserve, I saw at first hand the added value to local community policing provided by my Reserve colleagues. The current figure of 6,200 PSNI officers is an indictment of the House and the Executive: nothing more is being done to address the situation. Hollow words and empathy just do not cut it. Of those officers, 1,000 are on restricted duties and not on the front line, and between 500 and 800 are off duty due to sickness, injuries and stress on a daily basis. That leaves the Chief Constable with 4,500 officers available for duty, with shifts, rest days and leave reducing the number of officers on the ground even further. That is an appalling and unacceptable situation.

The call in the motion and in my party's amendment for the Justice Minister to set out her plans to urgently address the resource shortfall are timely and entirely valid. Unless action is seen to be happening in that regard, retention figures will continue to fall. In relation to amendment No 2, I share Trevor Clarke's concern that it strays — at least, there is a perception of it straying — into operational matters. In the meantime, let the House and the Executive hold this thought: you get what you pay for.

Mr Gaston: The ombudsman's report on the handling of the Alexander McCartney case concluded that the PSNI did not have capacity or capability to manage the risk posed by that offender, yet the motion before us somehow manages to take that difficulty and reduce it to a mixture of aspirations, vague comments and, regrettably, a suggestion that we should return to sectarianism in police recruitment. PSNI specialist teams were under-resourced, overwhelmed and unable to keep pace with the threat posed by high-risk offenders. The report does not say that the PSNI failed because it had too many officers who were Protestants.

The motion rightly expresses concern about violence against women and girls, but the only meaningful protection is an effective and robust police force in which vacancies are filled on merit by people who can do the job. It does not need a headline-grabbing policy from the Executive Office that hands out money to councils, some of which literally do not know what to do with it. Instead, that money should be invested in policing numbers. You do not tackle this blight on society by handing some of the money earmarked for groups that deal with violence against women and girls to HERe NI, as happens in Belfast. That organisation, as it told my colleague Councillor Ron McDowell, includes trans women in the category of women. It is shameful that the Assembly and the Executive Office are using money that is supposed to combat violence against women and girls to fund groups that think men should have access to female-only spaces.

The motion regrets the fall in police numbers. When the draft Programme for Government was published, the Police Federation described its policing commitments as "woolly" and containing "no cast-iron promises". On page 7 of 'New Decade, New Approach' (NDNA), the commitment is unequivocal:

Six years later, where are we? The number stands at just 6,278, which means a deficit of 1,222. The motion calls for:

We all know what that is code for: the return of a discriminatory, sectarian, anti-Protestant policy that denies young people career opportunities solely on the basis of religion. The PSNI will reflect society only when every candidate is free to join on merit and because of their capability and not because of sectarian engineering.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I call the Minister of Justice to respond to the debate. Minister, you have 10 minutes.

Mrs Long: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. It is not every debate in the Chamber that I wish could last longer. The issues that have been raised in the debate actually require more detailed interventions and expression, because they are really important. I apologise that I will not be able to respond to each Member's contribution, but I thank them because, on the whole, they were really helpful.

I begin by acknowledging the serious findings of the Police Ombudsman on the PSNI's handling of the offending activities of Alexander McCartney between January 2016 and March 2019. His actions were abhorrent, and my thoughts and sympathies remain with the victims and their families, who have endured unimaginable trauma. I also acknowledge, however, the dedication and professionalism of the PSNI officers who pursued McCartney and pursue other predators, secure the evidence and ensure that those predators face justice for their despicable crimes. Those officers' work protects children, disrupts abusers and demonstrates the very best of policing, even under significant pressure. The ombudsman's report found failings that have to be addressed, but it did not find that police officers were failing. In fact, it concluded that no individual police officer engaged in any form of misconduct; rather, the failings arose from a significant deficit in capability and capacity in the PSNI cybercrime teams, as well as resourcing pressures that limited their ability to manage the risks that McCartney posed.

It is important to highlight a number of details that are often missing from the public debate on the report. The ombudsman found that reduced capacity in the PSNI child protection team in 2016 was due to absences and other factors and was not a simple issue of wider police headcount. Secondly, the report found that the PSNI cybercrime centre used a prioritisation process in which terrorism and serious crime offences received priority and that that impacted the examination of devices submitted by the child internet protection team. There are lessons to be learnt about how we prioritise issues, but, as Members have rightly said, those are matters for the Chief Constable to reflect on as he responds. Taken together, they demonstrate that the challenges were much broader than recruitment, but I am in no denial about the issues that we face.

We also have to recognise that, for much of the period examined, we did not have a Justice Minister or an Assembly. We were not here to do the work that needed to be done and hold people to account on the issues. The PSNI has accepted the findings and said that lessons will be learnt. I am confident that the Chief Constable is working swiftly to do so and that the Policing Board will support him and hold him to account. We have to protect the most vulnerable not only in our communities but globally who may be exposed to the actions of online predators. I think of Cimarron Thomas and her father when I talk about that.

When it comes to online safety, I am committed to doing everything that I can to keep children and young people safe from harm. Social media and online platforms are central to young people's lives, but they present serious risks. The McCartney case highlighted that criminal justice responses alone are not enough. Safeguarding children online requires a coordinated cross-government approach, and that is the basis of the Executive's online safety strategy. My Department plays an active role in the oversight and delivery of that. The Online Safety Act in Westminster was a marked step forward. Ofcom's regulatory role, including guidance on age assurance, represents progress. Strong age verification should not be optional; it is essential in order to keep young people safe. The responsibility for the Act is with the UK Government — responsibility for telecommunications legislation is not devolved — but I worked to influence its development, strengthen accountability and ensure that Northern Ireland's interests were represented. I have also engaged directly with Ofcom, which is the designated regulator when it comes to implementation of the Act's provisions.

Members are aware of the significant legislative reforms that we introduced in the previous mandate, which included the new offences of upskirting, downblousing and cyber-flashing, and new grooming-related offences, unique to Northern Ireland and mainly perpetrated online, where an adult pretends to be a child for grooming purposes. We also strengthened the law on abuse of positions of trust to enhance protection for young people from inappropriate grooming in those areas. Those reforms have delivered tangible protections.

We keep the situation under review. That is why I sought the Assembly's consent for extending a number of provisions of the Crime and Policing Bill to Northern Ireland and intend to seek consent for further provisions. Proposals include strengthening sex offender notification requirements, particularly around restrictions on the notification of a new name, and requiring child sex offenders to provide notification in advance that they are going to stay for 12 hours or more in a household where children are present. I also propose to extend the new offence to criminalise the creation of child sexual abuse image generators; introduce a new offence of pornography depicting strangulation and suffocation; and update the current offence of possession of a paedophile manual, in order to bring AI-generated imagery within scope. Further new reserved matters in that space include the new offence of online facilitation of child sexual exploitation and abuse and a new power to scan devices for child sexual abuse images at the UK border.

Locally, I want to legislate to criminalise the creation and sharing of sexually explicit deepfake images, which I will do by tabling an amendment to the Justice Bill at Consideration Stage. Alongside that, we are leading a strategic approach in the Department and cross-departmentally to all forms of child exploitation. Safeguarding cannot sit in silos; it has to extend into homes, schools, communities and online spaces where young people spend their lives.

Members have mentioned that today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, so it is a timely opportunity for us to discuss those issues. The domestic and sexual abuse strategy, led by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health, and the Executive Office-led ending violence against women and girls strategy provide comprehensive coordinated frameworks for prevention, partnership and victim-centred support.

When it comes to police numbers, which is the crux of the debate, I will focus on some of the issues around capacity and funding. Rebuilding policing capacity is my highest priority. That is why the PSNI's workforce recovery business case, developed by the service and submitted to my Department, was approved by me and the Minister of Finance. It sets out a clear plan to stabilise workforce numbers, recommence sustained recruitment and rebuild capability across the organisation. That process has already started, and the overspend that the PSNI projects accounts for the money that has been spent to deliver the first year of the plan.

However, getting your business case approved does not mean that you have the cash to deliver it. Investment on the scale of the entire business plan over five years, which will be delivered in an annual tranche, cannot be done by Justice alone. It has to be prioritised at Executive level. I am optimistic that that will happen. We have first call on £7 million in the next monitoring round this year to support PSNI recruitment, a commitment that was reaffirmed in October. That £7 million will, I hope, materialise after the Budget statement tomorrow. Short-term funding injections can help restart recruitment, but they do not resolve the underlying workforce and business-as-usual pressures that the PSNI and my Department face. What we need is sustained, multi-year funding so that the service can plan, recruit, train and retain with confidence. The Finance Minister's recommendation that the remainder of the recovery plan be fully funded in the pending three-year Budget is a significant and welcome step, but it will be meaningful only if it is additional to the baselined amount for the PSNI in the Budget. If it is simply ring-fenced and taken from the Department of Justice's budget, it will be utterly meaningless for delivery. It is important that that be noted.

Safer communities is also a cross-cutting priority in the Programme for Government, so, again, it is not only a priority for the Department of Justice. We need to work with other Departments to ensure that we can deliver on it. The scale of the challenge posed by my budget is huge. Police officer numbers during the period covered by the ombudsman's report were higher than the levels today. The collapse of the Executive led to that decline. When we had no Executive, the numbers fell. I came back into office and secured money for an additional 100 officers to take the numbers back up to 7,100. The Executive then collapsed again, which is why that figure was not sustained, as the Member mentioned. We got back up to 7,100, but we collapsed yet again. The Chief Constable then did not have the political cover and an assurance on funding to go ahead and continue recruitment, as he would otherwise have done. That led to the really dire situation that we faced upon coming back into office, and it now needs to be recovered. I have to say that that recovery is far more expensive to deal with than it would have been had we had measured amounts of recruitment during the period of suspension, but I understand the decisions that were taken at the time.

My Department has had to take tough decisions in order to live within its budget. We are now at the point at which less than 0·5% of the DOJ budget is truly discretionary. We have not deprioritised the police within Justice. Sixty-five per cent of my budget goes to policing, while 35% of it goes to running the entirety of the criminal justice system outside policing, which covers probation, prisons, courts and everything else.

It is therefore not just a policing issue. All justice organisations need to be properly funded if we are to do child protection properly, to have proper public protection sentences and interventions and to have a Police Service that is capable of dealing with the increasing complexity of online harms and of protecting us locally and those internationally whom predators here seek to damage.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I invite Deirdre Hargey to make a winding-up speech on amendment No 2. I advise you that you have three minutes.

Miss Hargey: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. We debated earlier the importance of Budgets and the forthcoming multi-annual Budget. The multi-annual Budget is an important step for the Executive and, indeed, the Assembly. Of course, there will still be challenges, as our Budget does not meet all the identified needs and pressures, but it will bring into focus how such Budgets can provide longer-term certainty for planning. That will include how they are managed and how we work together in order to prioritise need. The multi-annual Budget will also present an opportunity to be more innovative and joined up in how we approach delivering public services to meet that need. That includes the policing budget, which is a sizeable part of the Justice budget, as the Minister outlined. Although work is ongoing to address the underlying issues with funding, recruitment and retention, the discussions must also point to budget management and prioritisation in policing.

There is no doubt that the case mentioned in the motion is one of the most serious in recent times. It again shines a light on the need to tackle violence against women and girls and the direct impact that violence against women and girls has on victims, their families and, indeed, the wider community. It also demonstrates the importance of the Office of the Police Ombudsman, which highlighted some of the failings and shortcomings. Although resourcing pressures impact on policing capacity, as was highlighted in the ombudsman's recent report, we know that prioritisation and culture play key roles in tackling those issues consistently and systemically. Of course, a cultural shift is not only for policing but for society as a whole. Our key public bodies that lead on public safety should, however, be leading the way in that area of work.

A recent Criminal Justice Inspection report highlighted the need for the criminal justice system to have a collective vision and shared priorities. The Executive in their Programme for Government prioritised tackling violence against women and girls. It is therefore important that that systemic issue be highlighted and reflected in the collective vision and shared priorities document. In turn, it must also be a priority for the PSNI, and that should be reflected in its work programme and budget. I know that that case was some time ago, and improvements have obviously been made, but we need to continue to do more.

It is important that work be done to ensure that we break down the siloed approaches that can result in the delays that we know there to be in the justice system. It is also important that we are innovative, especially when it comes to looking at emerging technologies and AI, to ensure that we not only deal with the challenges of today but future-proof that work. We also believe that policing with the community is the foundation not only of the policing dispensation here, as it is often the early alert system for emerging issues and trends, but of the needs of and priorities in the issues that are to be dealt with.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Time is up.

Miss Hargey: Thank you.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Deirdre. I call Jon Burrows to make a winding-up speech on amendment No 1. Jon, you have three minutes.

Mr Burrows: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Alexander McCartney was an evil and depraved man. He should never walk the streets again. I know a little bit about his offending. We talk about sextortion and blackmail. This was a man who got children to do things to themselves for his sexual gratification, and he tortured them and tortured them to keep doing those things, and sometimes that involved abusing their siblings. That is how evil this man was. He caused the death of Cimarron Thomas and her father, Benjamin. However, the scale of harm that he caused is unquantifiable. The reality is that, because of resources, the police in such cases get to a point where they identify enough victims to get a case across the line; someone makes a policy decision that they are going to have to stop; they go into safeguarding mode and try to identify vulnerable victims just so they can safeguard them; and then they come to the decision that there are thousands of victims whom they will not even try to trace, because policing has to go on and the suspect is in prison. Therefore, we do not know the scale of harm that that man caused.

I pay tribute to the child abuse investigation unit that tracked him down. It was a global case; it was a threat on an industrial scale. I know one of the investigators. He does not mind me mentioning his name — Detective Sergeant Neil McGuinness — and I know the impact that it had on him. At least five officers have been medically retired as a result of the investigation — two from cybercrime and three from the child abuse investigation unit. They saw image after image and video after video of things that you never want to have in your brain. However, one of the problems is that this team is so small and under-resourced that the officers do not get sufficient breaks and cannot take a gap between viewing images. They are against a ticking clock. None of those officers on that investigation got to see the occupational health and well-being (OHW) department, even though there should be routine screening of the police officers who are watching that level of images. Those officers did not get to see the OHW at all. Therefore, resources are at the heart of the failure to catch McCartney, but they are also at the heart of our Police Service, which is suffering attrition rates of 300 officers a year. That is a problem. We talk about recruitment, but you can keep recruiting until you get to the stage where you do not get to retain your supporting officers.

We also talk about prioritisation. Our police officers work in a job in which every decision has more consequences than you can possibly imagine. There could be three phones: if you do not examine one of them first, millions of pounds worth of drugs will flood our community; if you do not examine another, a police officer will be shot in the next six weeks; and if you do not examine the other, a child predator will continue to offend. That is the reality of policing. That is why we need resourcing, and it is why we should support our Police Service and remember that there are thousands more victims out there and that we need to get dealing with them and support our police.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I call Colin McGrath to conclude and wind on the motion. Colin, you have five minutes.

Mr McGrath: Thank you very much, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Today's motion comes as a result one of the most disturbing policing failures in recent years. I welcome the contributions from across the House. A young girl, Cimarron Thomas, lost her life, and her father later took his life. Both deaths were linked directly to the actions of Alexander McCartney and to the delays that allowed him to keep offending while he was on PSNI bail. That is the essential point. It is not about every detail — it is just about the simple truth that a child was failed, a family was devastated and an offender was left free to harm others because the system could not keep pace.

The ombudsman's investigation and report into the PSNI's handling of the case paint a stark picture. The report was published two weeks ago; I say that for Mr Clarke's benefit. Maybe if we changed the rules on when the Opposition have to give their notice of motions for Opposition day and bring it a little bit closer to the day, we would not have to pick something from two weeks ago to discuss. The report shows that there were serious delays, poor prioritisation and a failure in risk management and bail supervision. The key conclusion is unavoidable: it was not a failure of will, but a failure of capacity.

The PSNI has said outright that it simply did not have the resources needed to respond as victims rightly expect, and what we have is just not working. Let us be clear for the avoidance of doubt, police resources and funding levels are not an operational matter but a strategic decision for the Minister and the Executive, and the buck stops with the Minister and the Executive. People have been promised more by the Executive, and yet the Chief Constable has warned for over a year that police numbers are at a historic low and that public safety is at risk. His warnings are not vague. In March, he said that he was worried that it would:

In July, he warned that, without £200 million, visible policing would disappear in some communities, and the murder investigation teams would fall below UK standards. In September, he said, bluntly:

The alarm bells are deafening, and yet the Executive have done nothing meaningful in response.

Today is White Ribbon Day, as has been referenced. It is a day to highlight the impact of violence against women and girls and to recommit to ending the violence, and yet the Executive cannot even fund the Police Service to cover the basics. They are letting women and girls down in the worst way possible by not providing a viable, visible and properly funded police service. In June, after the racist riots in Ballymena, we heard big declarations that funding would be signed off, and that £200 million would be a game changer, and six months on, not a single pound has appeared, not one.

Instead, the Executive mismanaged the data leak liabilities, ignored the inevitable cost and made it easy for the Treasury to turn down emergency reserve funding, which should be available for genuinely unforeseen and unavoidable pressures. The result is a workforce at breaking point, collapsing recruitment, communities left with fewer officers and an increased risk to the public.

We cannot ignore the impact on representation. Catholic participation rose to almost 28% under the 50:50 policy on recruitment, which was a major achievement, but since the policy was scrapped, progress has stalled. The Chief Constable has said that headlines about legacy remain the biggest barrier for many young nationalists who might otherwise want to serve. Recruitment and legacy are intertwined, and pretending they are not is part of the problem, but it does not have to be that way. We can do so much better.

Today, the SDLP has set out four clear actions for Stormont, London and Dublin. First, the Department of Justice must stop dodging the issue of officer numbers, and commit to 7,000 officers by 2028 and pursue the £230 million required for the data leak liabilities. Secondly, reintroduce the 50:50 policy on recruitment as part of rebuilding a representative and effective police service. Thirdly, begin a serious process to renew the rule of law, reviewing what has worked since 1998 and what now needs to be strengthened. Fourthly, let us get legacy right: truth is the only route to reconciliation, not avoidance or political theatre.

The failures that contributed to Cimarron's death show the consequences of a system that has been weakened, underfunded and allowed to drift financially. If we are serious about public safety, the rule of law and protecting the vulnerable, let us finally face the reality of what policing needs and fund it accordingly. That is the House's responsibility, and we cannot afford to have it fail again.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: For clarification, on Opposition day, it is up to the Opposition to pick the motions that they wish to discuss and the time limit that is allotted for them. It is not up to the Business Committee. In fairness to the Business Committee, it is not its decision, it is your decision.

Mr O'Toole: On a point of order, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. It is important because we have a live proposal to the Business Committee. The point that my colleague made was not about the selection of the motions, it was about the timing. We have to submit our motions two weeks in advance. In every other jurisdiction on these islands — Dáil Éireann, Westminster, the Scottish Parliament — it is one week. Other parties in the Chamber do not want the SDLP to operate as a proper Opposition. That is their business, not ours.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: OK, Matthew. First, you know that it is not a point of order, but you have put your point on the record. Secondly, it is not for the Business Committee to change the Standing Orders, it is for the Committee on Procedures. I thought that you would have known that. I am going to move on.

Mr Clarke: On a point of order, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I am going to move on.

Mr Clarke: It is further to that point of order.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: No, it is not further to that because that was not a point of order, so there is no further to it. I am going to press on. Before I put the Question on amendment No 1, I remind Members that, if it is made, I will not put the Question on amendment No 2.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Members, please take your ease before the next debate.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): In conjunction with the Business Committee, the Speaker has given leave to Michelle McIlveen to raise the matter of traffic flow in Newtownards. Michelle, you have up to 15 minutes. It is over to you.

Miss McIlveen: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. First, I thank the Minister for attending this evening. In debates such as these, I do not like to just come to the Chamber with a list of problems to complain about. Where there are solutions, I want to outline them and hope that they can perhaps be taken forward. I put on record my appreciation to the Minister's predecessor for the action that he took as a result of my previous Adjournment debate on the dangers of the Portaferry Road. Where he could, he directed a number of key projects to be actioned. Those included safety measures and, importantly, the upgrading of the footpath between Teal Rocks and Old Shore Road. That is evidence that Adjournment debates such as these can deliver where there is a solution-based ask and a Minister willing to take the necessary action.

I take this opportunity to highlight a number of pinch points in the town that are only going to worsen as Newtownards and Comber continue to expand. First and foremost, there is the congestion on the Comber Road and Messines Road as traffic tails back from the Comber Road roundabout in the town. Despite responses coming from the Minister regarding those issues, the traffic is constant at all times of the day, every day of the week. A Sunday afternoon could be as bad as a Monday afternoon. Peak times are even worse, with queues on the Comber Road and traffic at a standstill halfway down the dual carriageway. Queues on Messines Road stretch three quarters of the length of that road. Both roads meet at the Comber Road roundabout at Castlebawn. The impact is not just on waiting times for those commuting to or through Newtownards. Those living off Cambourne Road and Lansdowne Road and in the West Winds estate struggle to get in and out of where they live with the constant stream of traffic. It is a particular problem for parents dropping children off at West Winds Primary School in the morning. Lines of cars waiting to leave West Winds in the morning are commonplace at drop-off time. The requests by the school leadership for an alternative access point have fallen on deaf ears at DFI's southern division. I previously requested a meeting with departmental officials from the southern division, but that was refused because a review had been undertaken in 2021. A traffic survey that I requested for traffic lights at the junction with Blenheim Drive was to be carried out, but we are yet to find out whether that has taken place or what the results are. Certainly, West Winds residents have advised that they have seen no evidence of a survey taking place. I have asked the Minister a number of questions about traffic flow at that location, but, disappointingly, I was told that there were no plans. I have asked whether there are plans to widen the Messines Road, but, according to the Minister, there are no such plans. I have asked for traffic lights at the offending roundabout, but there are no plans to consider that either.

There seems to be a belief that the traffic flow at that location is normal, but it is not. Anyone who is familiar with the area will know that it is not and that it has become a daily problem in the past few years. It appears that the Department is placing its trust in a partial dualling proposal that is attached to planning at the former Crepe Weavers site. Multiple grants of planning permission have been made since 2013, however, with no progress made on upgrading the road. The delay is reminiscent of how the Department was waiting for a developer to upgrade the path on the Portaferry Road. Eventually, the Department had to step in because the work was not happening. It would appear that the sums do not seem to be adding up for the developer in this case. Whether such a dualling would be of any real effect is arguable, anyway. It may be of assistance for those who are entering and leaving the site, but I do not see how it will improve the existing problems.

We need to look at upgrading the roundabout. It is not just about road markings at the roundabout, because that has not solved the problem. There needs to be some real investment at the location. There are considerable problems coming down the road, if you will pardon the pun. The Department has passed planning for 1,000 homes at Enler Village in Comber, and it is not unreasonable to assume that a number of those residents will travel down the road to or through Newtownards to schools or to their jobs. If the former Crepe Weavers site is developed or the other areas along the Comber Road, which are zoned for development, are built out, that will compound the current difficulties. It is better to act now than wait for the inevitable.

The alternative route, which more people are now taking because of the traffic problems, is along the Killynether Road and the Scrabo Road. Those roads are narrow and winding and are totally unsuitable for heavy traffic. The last thing that needs to happen is additional traffic being forced along those roads because nothing was done to address the problems on the Comber Road.

We should also be considering where the traffic is coming from and where it is going to, if it is not going into Newtownards. We know that a significant portion of that traffic is going down the Ards peninsula. There are many cogent arguments for a bridge from Portaferry to Strangford, thereby diverting unnecessary traffic going through Newtownards. That is a factor that should be taken into consideration.

Newtownards is the gateway to the Ards peninsula, and many people drive through the town in order to travel to the other side of Strangford lough rather than use the ferry. A bridge could remove that unnecessary traffic from the roads of Newtownards. I ask the Minister to look into the economic feasibility of such a scheme and potential sources of funding for it, which would not only benefit Newtownards but be transformational for the Ards peninsula by massively improving connectivity.

There are a number of other pinch points around the town that need to be addressed, and I want to consider those next. The first is the Zion Place roundabouts and, in particular, the junction with Frances Street. Zion Place has been identified as a problem for some time. The eastern distributor road is being built by developers as part of the expansion of the town at Beverley Garden Village, Rivenwood and Ballyreagh. That scheme, it is hoped, will divert traffic away from the centre of Newtownards, and I will come back to that.

The eastern distributor road is a number of years away from completion. In the meantime, traffic grinds to a halt from about 4.00 pm each day at the top of Frances Street, as cars try to exit on to Zion Place. That is a particular problem for buses, and I have spoken to Translink about it. It causes Translink real difficulties in providing reliable services. One solution that has been suggested is to widen the top of Frances Street to allow for a bus lane. That would result in the loss of a couple of parking spaces at the top of the road but could free up the movement of traffic at that location. I have raised that matter with DFI Roads, but it is not minded to look at it again, because, previously, it received some objections. The traffic, however, has worsened, and I respectfully ask the Minister to request that her officials look at that suggestion again as a means to improve public transport through the town.

Returning to the eastern distributor road, it is envisaged that the scheme will link the Bangor Road with the Donaghadee Road, the Movilla Road and, ultimately, the Portaferry Road. That will mean that traffic can avoid Newtownards town centre, however it will result in a significant increase in traffic on the Bangor Road in Newtownards. There will not just be the current level of traffic, because developers will be building in and around 1,200 new homes. If that increased traffic is going to end up on the Bangor Road, where will it go? The North Road in the town is already heavily congested in the mornings. This morning, for example, cars were nose to tail for over three quarters of its length. That is before any traffic has been diverted from the town centre. There needs to be an assessment of the potential impact on that road and what can be done to address the consequences of building the distributor road and that additional development.

A further pinch point is the roundabout at the Portaferry Road and the stretch of the Portaferry Road that runs from that roundabout to the junction with New Road. Roundabouts appear to be continuing theme as either a symptom or a cause of problems for the town. We need an assessment of traffic flow in the town, with a range of solutions to improve that flow. There was a Newtownards town centre sustainable transport working group, which brought together a range of stakeholders with a view to a pilot scheme being adopted for the town around active travel and modal shift. That group considered a number of options that may have assisted in alleviating a number of the problems that I have raised, but, sadly, it stopped meeting in June 2022. The Minister has confirmed, in response to questions that I have asked, that there is no intention of reviving the group, as the Department has decided to work on a regional plan. However, the Department did not tell any of the stakeholders that that was its plan. That was a missed opportunity not just for Newtownards but for the Department to learn from a pilot scheme. I ask the Minister to revisit that decision.

The final roads issue that I will raise is that of the Movilla Road. There is a recurrent issue with parking around Abbey Primary School. Cars park along both sides of the road and around the residential area. The cars parked there obscure the views of drivers as well as impact on traffic flow along the road. I have raised that with the local office and the divisional office. A scheme has been developed to include sight realignment of the road, the installation of parking bays and much-needed resurfacing. That needs to happen, but, given the funding calculations for my constituency, we are falling short of what we need, even for issues such as this, which involve the safety of schoolchildren going to and from school. I ask that that be looked at and that funding be made available for that important scheme.

I am pleased that there has been progress on the Newtownards park-and-ride. That is an important piece of the transport jigsaw for the town. I and my brother, who is a councillor for the town, have worked alongside Translink on it for a number of years. I hope that, once the business case is with the Minister, we will see a quick funding decision and the project progress. Progress on the Comber park-and-ride would also greatly help. I appreciate that a site on Belfast Road has been identified, but progress seems to be slow on that. We need to offer alternatives to the car. Investment in public transport, as well as recurrent support for our public transport providers, is key to making it an attractive alternative.

There are a number of key issues in Newtownards that need to be addressed. Newtownards and Comber are both expanding towns. That is causing traffic flow problems for Newtownards that will only worsen as more houses are built. We are already seeing problems at Comber Road, Frances Street, North Road, Portaferry Road and Zion Place. There needs to be a focused and coherent plan to address forthcoming issues as well as the current problem. I ask that the following be looked at again: re-establishment of the Newtownards town centre sustainable travel working group; swift progress on the Newtownards and Comber park-and-ride facilities; funding for the Movilla Road scheme; a focused, Department-led scheme to address the particular problems of Comber Road and Messines Road; a feasibility study on having a bridge between Portaferry and Strangford; assessment of the potential impact on North Road of the eastern distributor road and the development associated with that scheme; and, last but not least, a bus lane scheme for Frances Street.

I look forward to hearing the Minister's response now that we have done a canter around Newtownards and to having the opportunity to meet officials to look at those options.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you very much, Michelle. All other Members who are called to speak will have approximately five minutes. I call Kellie Armstrong.

Ms K Armstrong: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. My apologies to yourself and to Miss McIlveen for being late. Unfortunately, a group of children were talking to me about roads and public transport before I came here.

I cannot disagree with anything that Miss McIlveen said. At times, the traffic around Newtownards has to be seen to be believed. I get stuck most evenings on my way home, regardless of whether I leave here late or whether I leave my office at an earlier time, particularly around the Portaferry Road. There is absolutely no consideration given to how many roundabouts are blocked by static cars that are trying to move into the town. The route to Bangor was not conceived appropriately.

There is an issue with the amount of damage that the congestion is doing to businesses. My office is on South Street, one of the busier streets in Newtownards, and retailers in that area have commented on the difficulty that shoppers experience at times in getting in and out of the town, so something has to be done.

When was the last time that Newtownards traffic was reviewed effectively? I have said on several occasions that I welcome park-and-rides. The planned park-and-ride in Newtownards is in the wrong place. It will increase traffic in the centre of Newtownards, which will decimate some of the routes through the town. There will be such an amount of traffic trying to use that park-and-ride, which is in the town centre, that we will see difficulties for retailers in the area. To be honest, we will be at a worse standstill when it opens. It should have been on the Scrabo High School site but we lost that site, so it is in the town instead of being outside the town. There is a junction close by that will not be able to cope with the amount of traffic. We have already heard from Miss McIlveen about how traffic flow has impacted on other parts of the town.

There needs to be a review of the one-way system, and consideration given to the amount of pedestrianisation in the town. Is there another way of doing that to improve the flow through and around Newtownards and make it a more effective town for everyone who wants to use it?

There absolutely should be more public transport options so that we can take people out of cars. If the first park-and-ride that you hit when travelling from Portaferry or Comber is in Dundonald, you are encouraging cars to go that far. The delay in the roll-out of park-and-rides is unbelievable: we need the next phase of park-and-rides to be realised. If cars do not have to go into Newtownards to use the park-and-ride there, that will take away some of the rural traffic.

The one thing that I do not agree with is the idea of a bridge from Portaferry to Strangford because of the connectivity implications and the destructive impact that it would have on both villages. The villages would end overnight because the bridge would not be where the ferry currently crosses. We all know that taking a road away from those villages means that they will die on the vine as time moves on.

I agree that we need to look at the roll-out of park-and-rides and why it is taking so long. There have been issues with the old Ards leisure centre site in Newtownards, with asbestos a consideration there. The planning permission for that site has progressed, so what is taking so long? That is a valuable piece of land and should have been used for much-needed social housing, but if it is going to be used for a park-and-ride, make it a park-and-ride, because when that is being planned, the road network in the area will need to be redesigned. If up to 400 or 500 cars are going to be going there every morning, on top of the issues that Miss McIlveen raised, we will be in trouble in Newtownards.

Newtownards is a town that is growing. Comber is growing. There are villages down the Ards peninsula that are growing. A heck of a lot of people are transferring from those areas through Newtownards to Bangor or Belfast. What we are finding, however, are the standstills. I can leave my office and, in less than a mile, be sitting in a traffic jam for 45 minutes to move another mile. It is unbelievable.

We need to give the issue consideration, Minister. I have a great working relationship with your team in the area. They work extremely hard and are flexible in their approach. Some of the ways in which they have managed to fund road repairs have been excellent, and I welcome them, but I wish that a town planner would have a look at the transport in Newtownards and the way that it works or, rather, does not work.

The new roundabouts that were put in from Messines Road out to Portaferry have acted more as a blockage than an enabler of traffic. There are more people now driving through Newtownards to avoid the Messines Road, so it has not worked. The new road that Miss McIlveen talked about, which will connect the Movilla Road to the Portaferry Road, will, to be honest, have Nimbyism written all over it, because people who are buying houses there are not expecting the traffic flow that will hit the area, so I expect there to be a lot of objections. We therefore need to step in now and show leadership on the issue before it gets worse.

Mr Harvey: I thank my party colleague and fellow Strangford MLA Michelle McIlveen for securing this important Adjournment debate. For many years, she has worked tirelessly to raise the issue of traffic flow across Newtownards, and I pay tribute to her for continuing to battle the Department on the matter.

Anyone who lives and works in Newtownards, or, indeed, anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting that beautiful market town, will be aware of the traffic pressures being experienced at all times of the day but particularly at peak periods and on Saturdays. Over recent years, Newtownards has seen a huge increase in the number of chimney pots, with large numbers of out-of-town residential developments springing up. Although development is to be welcomed, and although the town has inevitably benefited economically from increased footfall, pressure on the town's infrastructure has continued to build, with little or no response from the Department. Residents find themselves in gridlock daily, spending unacceptable amounts of time sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic merely to get around the town, let alone to go through it.

The Comber Road and Castlebawn roundabouts have already been mentioned in the debate. It is not an exaggeration to say that that area of the town comes to a complete standstill every weekday, with queues along the Messines Road often tailing back to the main A20 dual carriageway. Journey times, particularly for those from Belfast coming to and from the peninsula, have continued to increase in recent years. Despite that, the Department has been unable to come up with any meaningful solutions to alleviate the traffic congestion that motorists experience daily. In her response to a question for written answer dated June of this year, the Minister stated:

Ms K Armstrong: Will the Member give way?

Mr Harvey: Such a statement fails to appreciate the enormity of the congestion that manifests for significantly long periods, not "short periods at peak times". Yes, I am happy to give way to the Member.

Ms K Armstrong: Thank you, Harry. I just want to say that, last Christmas, for a number of days on end, there was a two-hour traffic jam at the very place that you are talking about.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Harvey: Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Member for her very useful intervention.

It is not acceptable that the main arterial route to facilitate the bypassing of the town remains a single carriageway, with no traffic management solutions being proposed, despite the congestion that that is causing for the Newtownards community. Although we all appreciate the departmental budgeting constraints at this time and thus do not expect miracles, the Newtownards community does not find it acceptable that absolutely nothing has been achieved. Nothing has even been attempted by the Minister's Department to address the issues.

In other parts of the town, road safety continues to be a concern for many. Along with colleagues in this place, I have, for several years, been highlighting the issue of pedestrian safety at Teal Rocks specifically and motorist safety along the Portaferry Road more generally. It is shameful that DFI officials have been unable to reduce the national speed limit along that section of road, which is used by schoolchildren to board school buses. I call again on the Minister to rethink the Department's position on that issue in particular. It is an issue that everyone in the Chamber and, indeed, every councillor has submitted a request about. Residents, traders and visitors are all calling on the Minister to intervene and to work with the local community to establish what can be done to ease an ever-increasing problem. The long-awaited park-and-ride facility will be of immense benefit, but it cannot be viewed as a silver bullet.

We must see the road network improvements that will support transport resilience for the future, and I trust that the Minister will act for the benefit of Newtownards. I also look forward to her exploration of the idea of a Strangford/Portaferry bridge.

Mr Stewart: I thank the Member for Strangford for bringing the topic to the Chamber and for so eloquently setting out the position. My party colleague Mike Nesbitt, the Health Minister, had hoped to be here today, but he has a prior and unavoidable engagement with a constituent on a health matter. He sends his apologies. I will say a few words as Infrastructure spokesperson, if that is OK. Undoubtedly, many points have been made, but I am happy to share a few of his concerns and a few of mine.

Newtownards is a successful market town that has grown substantially in recent years. It is not served by rail but is entirely dependent on the road network for residents of the town and those of the Ards peninsula, to which Newtownards acts as a gateway. I know from my colleagues in the area at council and Assembly level and from my experience that the traffic appears to have worsened significantly in the locality in recent years, partly due to the success of the town, which has won High Street of the Year on a number of occasions, and partly due to the growth in population, which is scheduled to continue, with Newtownards being the only significant area of housing growth in the Ards and North Down Borough Council area plan.

There are particular issues at Messines Road and Comber Road, as has already been said, with substantial waits being a regular occurrence for drivers coming into the town from the Belfast and Comber directions. It affects commuters but also the residents of the many homes on the Comber Road who have to try to get into town during school runs, which all take much longer than would have been the case in the past. Members who spoke previously talked about two-hour waits at certain times of the year, and that is totally unacceptable.

So far, the Department for Infrastructure appears unwilling to seriously review what can be done to alleviate the situation, which continues to get worse, year by year. We appeal to the Department today to take the matter seriously — we thank the Minister for coming along — and do all that it can to influence it.

Other areas struggle due to the congestion in the town centre in general and in particular on the Bangor and Donaghadee Roads. A significant cause of many of the issues was the nature of the zoning in Newtownards in the 1980s and 1990s. The need for the town to have a ring road due to population and traffic growth was acknowledged and planned for. It provided the Government of the day with an opportunity to step in and build a ring road and charge each developer as they developed the housing area. Instead of that, it was left to each developer to build their own section of road as they built the homes. A number of developers, as Members will be aware, have done that and have built their sections to a high standard, but what good is just one section of the road if does not go anywhere? That is the scenario that Newtownards finds itself in, with an incomplete ring road with new homes being built on it year-on-year, but they are totally reliant on the same small infrastructure of the town centre.

Sadly, as we are all aware, we cannot undo the errors of the past, but measures can be taken by the Minister and her Department in the interim. One such measure is the completion of the park-and-ride infrastructure at William Street and at the other locations that the proposer of the motion has already identified, which have been long promised but are, sadly, still undelivered. In fact, despite the Department having vested the site some years ago, it has yet to pay the council for the purchase of the site. I am not sure: maybe the Minister can update us as to where that is now. The new park-and-ride facility would have the potential to take so many cars off the road, supporting sustainable public transport and better linking Newtownards with the popular Glider network from Dundonald.

The current inaction is simply not good enough, which is why I am happy to add my voice to that of my Ulster Unionist colleagues and Members in the Chamber who are vexed about this and rightly so. We call for the Department for Infrastructure to take the matter of congestion seriously, and the Minister should do all in her power to alleviate it.

Mr McNulty: I thank the Member for bringing this important issue to the Assembly this evening. On the matter of traffic flow in Newtownards, I agree with the Members that traffic-flow issues are at a peak and are causing immense disruption, delay and danger to drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

I spoke to my colleague Joe Boyle, an SDLP councillor who, as everyone knows, is a hard-working, long-standing representative for Ards and the Strangford peninsula. Joe said to me, in his joyful and positive manner, that Newtownards and the Ards peninsula are victims of their own success. People — families and communities — get up in the morning, roll up their sleeves and go to work or school to study, shop, farm or fish. He described there being a mile-and-a-half tailback of traffic from the first roundabout going into Newtownards from the peninsula, starting at 7.00 am and remaining so for the next one to two hours, and the reverse of that in the evenings. He said that that traffic is the unfortunate result of the positive inputs of many people heading to work in Newtownards and Belfast — mostly in Belfast — and that schools also cause pinch points. As I said, the town of Newtownards is a victim of its own success. Great shopping, businesses and hospitality ensure that people want to go into the town. The lack of parking exacerbates the issue, with people having to circle round to look for parking spaces. That causes further pinch points and traffic congestion.

I stress that the problems are not restricted or unique to Newtownards but are felt across the North. The current mess with traffic flow is the result of policy inaction from the Department for Infrastructure. The Minister often refers to "British austerity" — Sinn Féin's favourite term — binding her Department's capacity to undertake projects, but issues such as traffic flow and road safety are the direct responsibility of her Department. The responsibilities and failures of Departments in the North cannot continue to be blamed on Westminster, especially not by so-called republicans. The Assembly has a duty to serve the people who live here, ensuring that roads are built to make for safe and efficient communities. I urge the Minister for Infrastructure to take up her responsibility and explore traffic flow solutions such as having a fixed Strangford crossing to distribute traffic more evenly, instead of having the current, unsuitable bottleneck system.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Minister, you have about 10 minutes.

Ms Kimmins (The Minister for Infrastructure): Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I too thank Miss McIlveen for bringing the debate to the House. I thank all Members who contributed for their honesty. It is obvious that you are all working at the coalface in Newtownards. Although I live so far away from it, I worked in Newtownards for a while. I did my first social work placement there. Hearing of the town — the roads and the links in and out of it — has led to me reminisce. I often travelled that road from Comber to Newtownards. That was many years ago, but I am familiar with it, and that has been helpful in trying to get to grips with the issues that have been raised.

I have listened to the issues raised by representatives of the constituency, and I hear those concerns. Officials have looked at this in the past, but it is evident that there is a rationale for us to look at it again. I have asked officials to closely monitor many of the issues that you raised, but I am happy for a meeting to take place with you, Michelle, to look at that in greater detail. A huge number of suggestions, challenges and issues have been identified here today, and I do not intend to go through every one of them. It is important, however, that we hear them. It reflects how the community feels, how local businesses feel and the real challenges that they face. I imagine that, as Ms Armstrong outlined, the Christmas period will have an impact on congestion.

Investing in our roads is critical not only to ensuring the safe movement of people and goods but to allowing the growth or our economy, which is important. As others have said, towns such as Newtownards may be thriving, but we need to ensure that we enable the conditions for them to continue to do so. There is no doubt that there are funding challenges. The Member who secured the debate has been a Minister and will understand that. At this point, as Ministers, we have to take decisions that prioritise road safety and other critical things. There are so many competing priorities. I am not using that as an excuse: it is fair to say that the majority of Members here will recognise that that is a reality. Their colleagues who sit round the Executive table face similar challenges. However, I will never shirk my responsibilities. I will continue to do what I have been doing, which is to work with people, other MLAs and communities to find solutions and do the best that we can with what we have.

Members have described clearly the impact of traffic congestion and how it can build up significantly in many of the areas that have been identified, particularly at peak times, whether it is in the morning, when people are going to and from work and school, or, likewise, in the evening. Ms Armstrong mentioned the importance of looking at some form of transport planning. That work is under way across all 11 councils, particularly in conjunction with the local development plans that councils are working on. My Department has the overarching transport strategy, for which the consultation closed at the end of September. We are also working on the transport plans for specific council areas, and Ards and North Down is one of those that are included. That is an important opportunity for all the issues to be fed in and for us to try to identify solutions. The solutions do not relate purely to roads; it is about providing other options that mean that people do not have to use their cars, be that active travel or park-and-ride. I really welcome the positive feedback on the Newtownards park-and-ride. I appreciate that we need to get further information on the other one, I am happy to respond to Members in writing on that. It is also about public transport. I am having those conversations with officials all the time. We are ambitious about what we want to achieve with transport planning. However, we have to ensure that, if we take steps to discourage the use of the private car, we have the options in place to enable people to make other choices, be it walking, wheeling, cycling or using our public transport.

We are constantly grappling with those competing priorities. I am an eternal optimist, however, and I believe that none of that is unachievable. Local input and knowledge is invaluable. It is key that my officials and I hear what the realities of that are for people who live with it every day and that we can look at solutions. We can potentially take that away and come back or meet on-site, as I have suggested, on the back of your request, Michelle.

With regard to some of the more specific points, Harry Harvey mentioned the national speed limit on a specific road. Apologies if I have missed that, but we are reviewing speed limits overall. I am looking at that. I have raised the issue of national speed limits, particularly on roads that are near schools in our rural communities, for many years, as well as looking at permanent 20 mph zones in more urban areas as well.

I have made loads of notes here because many specific issues were raised. The bridge to Portaferry is not one that I am familiar with. There is obviously a difference of opinion on that, so we will leave that for another time.

It is really good to have a debate in this tone, where we are not saying, "These are all the problems. Go away and sort them". Members are putting forward suggestions for what could work and are saying, "Let us test it, look at it and see whether it is an option". Miss McIlveen mentioned looking at things such as temporary traffic lights and other options, particularly at the roundabouts. I can maybe look at that again with officials to see whether there are opportunities. Movilla Road is another one that I am not familiar with specifically. I am happy to look at it with regard to parking on either side of the road. I am due to see the business case on the Newtownards park-and-ride, potentially in spring 2026. Translink is working on that. Hopefully, by then, I will know more about that and will be able to give a further update on where that is.

I am generalising over a lot of things, but I am trying to remember some of the key points and what I can come back on. I am happy to take some of it away. There is a lot there that we need to look at. If I can come back on some key issues or we can arrange site meetings, I am happy to do that through you, Michelle. I want the message from here to be this: I hear you. I am listening to the issues, and I am keen to find solutions and see how we can improve things. It might not be what we think at the outset, but the Department is looking at lots of things consistently not just for Newtownards but across the board in all our transport planning and how we have to adapt to the future.

I was talking this morning about the estate that I am from: Barcroft in Newry. When I was growing up, I remember there being one car per house or maybe even one car per every two houses in that estate. When I pick up my kids in the evenings, I see that there are now perhaps three cars per house; you cannot get parked in that very small council estate. Society has changed drastically since a lot of the transport planning and local development plans for access to towns and cities across the North were originally done. We have to ask whether we should continue to build more roads to adapt to the ever-increasing number of cars, or whether we should provide people with options to enable them to get out of their cars and travel differently. There is a lot to work on in that regard. The key thing is that we are actively working on those things and developing a plan, which, I know, needs to be followed by action. Hopefully, through continued engagement with you all, we can do that in the not-too-distant future.

I thank everybody for the nature of the debate. It has been really good. I offer my commitment to working with you all to find solutions. Hopefully, we will be able to alleviate some of the issues that have been identified this evening.