Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I welcome from the Department for Infrastructure Colin Woods, Peter Rice, Susan Anderson and Declan McGeown to the Committee. Are members in agreement that the evidence session be recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): The Committee apologises for having kept the witnesses waiting. The previous evidence session was mammoth. We were dealing with important evidence from Northern Ireland Water (NIW) on the Bill that the Committee is scrutinising.

I invite the witnesses to make a brief opening statement of up to 10 minutes, after which we will have some questions.

Ms Susan Anderson (Department for Infrastructure): I will give a short presentation. It will be no longer than 10 minutes, given the time pressures.

We are here to discuss the departmental budget. I will set out the opening budget allocations and where we are at in-year. I will then move on to discuss the future years budget exercise that we have recently completed.

Committee members will recall that we launched our consultation on the equality impact assessment (EQIA) of the draft budget on 6 March 2025. The consultation ran for 12 weeks and closed on 5 June. We received 27 returns. They covered a range of different themes, which are set out in the slides. A number of them responded on multiple themes, such as street lighting, public transport and water. Some 22% of the 27 returns related to community transport, 15% to concessionary fares, 7% to the EQIA process and how it operates and 4% to roads maintenance, water and waste water. We subsequently published the outcome report, which was shared with the Committee a couple of months ago.

I will now move on to the final opening budget decisions. Our final opening budget is £637·1 million. That represents a £77·6 million or 14% increase on last year's opening budget and a small increase on the draft budget outcome on which we consulted.

The Committee will see from the pie chart that just under 50% of the resource budget goes to our two largest arm's-length bodies (ALBs), which are NI Water and Translink. The remainder is then split among areas in the Department: salaries; the water and departmental delivery (WDD) group; the climate, planning and public transport (CPPT) group; and the transport and road asset management (TRAM) group. Our two smaller ALBs — Waterways Ireland and the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) — receive around 1% each. What does that look like compared with our requirements? The pie chart shows, as part of the opening budget decisions, that just under 80% of Translink's requirements were met and that 87% of NI Water's requirements were met. Some 113% of the CPPT requirements were met. That was largely for community transport. Additional funding went to community transport as part of opening budget decisions.

I will now move on to capital. The slide focuses on our general capital budgets, so it excludes areas that are ring-fenced. Our final opening budget was £917 million, of which just under £550 million represents the general position. That is an 11·8% increase on last year's opening budget. That represented a small reduction from the draft budget owing to changes in profiles that we had anticipated as time moved on. As part of our opening budget decisions, we also factored in capital over-planning of £35·1 million. We did that at the start of the year in order to maximise our spending power throughout the year to make sure that we could get as much funding out as we could at the start of the year and accordingly plan for it as the year progresses.

Our ring-fenced areas are elements on which the Minister does not have discretion. They are ring-fenced by the Executive, and they focus primarily on the flagship projects: the A5; the A6; the Belfast transport hub; and the city and growth deal projects, which include Belfast Rapid Transit phase 2 (BRT2), the Lagan pedestrian bridge; the Newry southern relief road and the Enniskillen, Strabane and Derry riverfronts. We also had some ring-fenced PEACE PLUS funding for the Enterprise stock. The chart splits the various elements in the ring-fenced total budget. What does that look like for capital requirements? In the opening budget, NI Water has received 86% of what it said that it could deliver this year. That increased to just under 90% after the June monitoring round. Translink has received around 89% of what it indicated that it could deliver this year. The Department is receiving about three quarters of what it indicated that it could deliver this year through the TRAM group. That includes our ring-fenced and general capital allocations.

It will be useful to update the Committee on June monitoring. The written briefing paper was prepared after the outcome, so it would be helpful to set out where we are at. A number of the bids that we submitted were met, totalling £6·1 million. We got £1·8 million for the road drainage charge, which goes to NI Water; £1·3 million for the DVA; and a total of £3 million for the increased employers' National Insurance contributions that came into effect from the start of this financial year. That was against a total pressure of £12 million. We also received the £4·3 million commitment that was agreed as part of the final budget.

For capital, we declared an easement of £16·7 million for the A5. Again, that was ring-fenced, and its reallocation was at the Minister's discretion. We bid for and received £11 million for NI Water for increasing its waste water capacity; £1 million for health and safety and for local transport and safety measures; and a further £3·4 million for the A1 junctions. We received further funding for the commitments that were made as part of final budgeting. We received £0·4 million for the ring-fenced transformation fund, and there was a £1 million general allocation. That has reduced our over-planning commitment, which I mentioned previously, to £34 million. That covers where we are at in-year.

I will now move on to the future years' exercise. The Executive will have their first multi-year Budget in over a decade, so we expect it to be a multi-year exercise. For resource, Departments were asked to plan on the basis of a rolled-forward resource baseline, which means taking our baseline from the current year and rolling it forward against our requirements. We have identified requirements of £750·8 million, increasing to £794 million in the third year. We have looked at the gap, and it means that we will have to bid for £113 million, increasing to £156·9 million in the final year. Those are the bid forms on which the Committee will have already received details. Finally, we are planning for a four-year capital budget. Resource is a three-year budget, so we are planning for slightly longer on the capital side. Some £1·3 billion has been identified for 2026-27, increasing to £2·3 billion in the final year. Capital is slightly different from resource in the way in which it operates. We do not work to the baseline position. Rather, we work on building it up from a zero base, so it is a slightly different approach.

I will now move on to next steps. We expect a draft multi-year Budget to be presented to the Executive at some stage in the autumn, and the Minister of Finance will then consult for a 12-week period, after which he will agree a final Budget.

That was a very quick run-through of the information so far. We are happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is great. Thank you very much, Susan. I will ask a couple of questions, after which I will bring in the Deputy Chair and other members.

I take you first to the final opening capital budget for 2025-26. The figure that we have is £917 million. Are you on target to spend that amount? Where are you at with that figure for overall spend?

Ms Anderson: I will talk about the overall spend first, but we are on target to spend the full budget that we have been allocated for this year across all the various areas. We are working with our over-planning amount as well. We are therefore doing as much as we can on the capital side.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): How close are you to spending the ring-fenced funding for the A5 flagship project, which is down as being £181·7 million?

Ms Anderson: I will hand over to Colin to answer that one.

Mr Colin Woods (Department for Infrastructure): For the majority of projects, spending the money is not an issue. The A5 is the exception, because we had planned to be at the construction stage by now, and a significant budget allocation was provided for that. We are therefore working through the process of providing the Department of Finance with figures on what the reduced requirement will be, taking into account the delay to the project.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Do you know what that figure will be, Colin?

Mr Woods: I am not sure what stage the decision-making process is at, but I expect that the requirement for this year is somewhere in the region of £60 million, rather than the £165 million that was the opening position.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): There is a figure of £90·5 million kicking around. I am not sure whether you recognise it.

Mr Woods: I do not specifically recognise it, but it is in the ballpark.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): It is money that probably will not be used for the A5 project. That is something that I want to explore with you briefly. My understanding is that a portion of the £181·7 million funding for the A5 comes from the Southern Government. Is that correct?

Ms Anderson: That is correct. An element of that is from the Shared Island Fund.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Do you know roughly what percentage of the £181·7 million comes from Shared Island funding? By the way, I am trying to find out how much comes from the Executive.

Mr Woods: The Department of Finance managed that aspect of the relationship, and then we simply got an allocation. I therefore apply that caveat. Somewhere in the region of half the money this year was to come from the Shared Island Fund. Given that the project has not proceeded to the construction stage, as we had expected it to, we are working through what that means exactly for the money that goes back to the centre. A portion is Shared Island funding, which is unlikely to be available for reallocation.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Is it therefore fair to say that some of that £181·7 million will be unspent and that, of that unspent money, some of it will go back to the Southern Government? I imagine that the Executive funding, because it is ring-fenced, will have to be sent back to the centre.

Mr Woods: Yes.

Ms Anderson: That is correct.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Do you expect to be bidding for that if there is a monitoring round? Do you have any indication of whether there will be a monitoring round in October?

Ms Anderson: At this stage, there is no indication of when the next monitoring round will be. However, we stand ready to bid quite strongly for additional capital as and when that is launched and issued. We have a good track record of spending a lot of capital as the year progresses, and we are absolutely ready to do that. Again, it will be based on Ministers' decisions, but we would bid on that.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): What level of confidence do you have? If that figure is £90 million —. Do you know how much has been spent? Did you say how much has been spent on the A5?

Mr Woods: The requirement for the year is about £65 million. That is what we expect to spend this year. That is quite an uncertain figure because we have live legal proceedings and ongoing discussions with landowners, but that is our estimated requirement.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. I am not looking for exact figures by any stretch of the imagination. If you are talking about a ballpark figure of £120 million is left, you would assume from your evidence that 50% might head back to the South, which leaves £60 million that might head back to the centre. Have you done any scoping around what that might be used for if there was a monitoring round and that figure was returned to DFI, given the fact that it came from DFI in the first place? It would be up to DOF to attribute it, but do you have any idea how that would be prioritised?

Mr Woods: On the first point, I think that estimate is high. Without being able to give you a precise figure, I think that it is more like £30 million than £60 million. As Susan said, we would be ready to bid at any point. If funding were to become available for reallocation, we would have the ability to bid for and spend that in-year.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I understand that. That is fine. I have a technical question that came up from the last session. We got some evidence from NI Water. The witnesses mentioned that your Department had been successful in the public-sector transformation fund process and that they had a successful bid for natural solutions — they did not actually say that, but I asked questions, and they agreed that that was the case — and urban drainage. Is that capital? I am guessing that it is.

Ms Anderson: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): For 2025-26, the figure that I am looking at here, which is from DOF, is £375,000 for that year. Does that appear in the table that I am looking at, which is the 2025-26 final opening capital budgets?

Ms Anderson: Sorry, I am not sure what you are looking at. Is it the briefing that we have given you?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I think so. That came from DFI.

Ms Anderson: We are looking at the same table, then.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Yes. It is the 2025-26 final opening capital budget.

Ms Anderson: That is included in the line, "Department - Sustainable Drainage". It is a small amount this year, and then it ramps up in later years.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): According to what I am looking at here, the figure that is coming from DOF is £375,000 for this year. You cannot see this table, obviously; I am just reading from a DOF table that says, "Spending profile transformation funding requirement". For DFI, under "Natural solutions - Urban Drainage", it says £375,000. Do you think that that is incorporated into that figure of £3 million?

Ms Anderson: Yes, it will be in that line.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is absolutely fine. The final question from me is around Northern Ireland Water. There is a figure in the table of £350 million. Do you think that includes reinvestment and reform (RRI) borrowing at £105·7 million? You might recognise that figure. Does the Department plan, or have any intention, to increase RRI borrowing for Northern Ireland Water?

Ms Anderson: It is not within our remit to determine that. RRI borrowing is agreed and determined by the Executive. That is managed by DOF. The full amount of RRI borrowing that could be drawn down this year was included in the opening budget. I think that £105 million was for NI Water, as you mentioned; £20 million was to Education for schools; and £100 million was for housing. That has already been committed for this year as part of the opening budget decisions. Therefore, we do not have any more flexibility to go and engage with DOF to see if that can be increased further, given that it is maxed out at the top line.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): My understanding is that, in order to increase that figure, that is a negotiation that the Executive have with the Treasury. Is that right?

Ms Anderson: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): OK. That is fine. That is great. Thank you, folks.

Mr Stewart: Thanks, folks, for coming along. I have a couple of questions on arm's-length bodies. We heard from Translink last week about its concerns at budget shortfalls. I am sure that you recognise them. What chats have you had with Translink about the potential impacts of those costs? Given the lack of money that is forthcoming in monitoring rounds, should we be concerned? Translink put in a bid for £19·4 million in June and got £1 million. If that was repeated, there could be serious shortfalls.

Mr Peter Rice (Department for Infrastructure): We are working closely with Translink on its budget. We have been working with it throughout the year, looking at its financial position and the allocation from the Department. Translink has already taken steps to try to manage that financial position by looking at cost reductions etc and increased fare revenue. We continue to engage with Translink to reflect its current position and what other measure it and we can do to mitigate that. That means going back and looking at efficiency savings within Translink and how it can increase its revenue, but also working with colleagues in the Department and in DOF to see if we can secure additional funding from DOF as part of a future monitoring round. We are continuing to work closely with Translink to try to manage that situation.

Mr Stewart: Thanks, Peter. That takes me to my next point. You talked about Translink's attempts to make efficiency savings. What directive has the Minister or permanent secretary issued to the directorates of the Department for Infrastructure to make in-house efficiency savings? If so, what has been made this year compared with previous years?

Ms Anderson: We are working to live and deliver services within our budget allocations. We are given an amount to work to and deliver our services within, rather than efficiency targets as such.

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that. Other Ministers may well have asked their arm's-length bodies or Departments to find ways of internal collaboration to ensure that work was not being duplicated or that teams could work together. What has either the Minister or the permanent secretary asked the Department to do to find savings, rather than to live to budget? It is a significant budget of £1·5 billion or £1·6 billion, so if even a small percentage was saved, that could be impactful across the Department. To that end, what efficiency savings have been made by the Department?

Mr Declan McGeown (Department for Infrastructure): What underpins the Department as it moves forward is that, yes, we work to a budget that does not fully meet our needs, but we live within that budget, as Susan rightly said, and cut our cloth accordingly. Within that, we look at trying to be more innovative. You will have heard, when Denis and the Minister were before the Committee a few months ago, about the foundations and how that was looking at how we could work better, differently and suchlike. We try to exploit opportunities through IT and, as the Chair mentioned earlier, try to look at opportunities through the transformation fund. We are always looking at opportunities to make savings and efficiencies and at ways to do things better and differently.

Mr Stewart: Within the capital spend — with the exception of the A5, which we will probably get a report on about the final figure for this year — the Belfast transport hub has been assigned £39·9 million. That money is almost complete. Is that for just final aspects of the projects, or are aspects of that still being spent? Does that include the works around it, for example, and the streetscaping etc?

Mr Rice: That total is for the project in its entirety, including the station and the public realm works in and around the station.

Mr Stewart: That money will be spent within the 2025-26 year?

Mr Rice: That money will be spent within this financial year. There is a tail next year. The station itself being substantially complete next summer is the target. Operationally, it is almost there.

Mr Stewart: OK. My final topic for now is active travel. I do not see a specific line for active travel, but I am conscious that it is 10% ring-fenced. What is the figure for active travel? What percentage of the active travel 10% has been spent from the previous year? Back to the point that I continually make: if it is allocated to and ring-fenced for active travel, how can the Committee ensure that it is being spent properly and not — I do not want to use the word "squandered", but forced to be spent rather than spent on the projects that matter.

Mr Woods: The active travel spend is disaggregated across a number of areas. That simply reflects what it is spent on. As you know, we have dedicated active travel infrastructure construction, a budget line for the Belfast cycle network and a budget line for sustainable travel grants, which largely go to councils to fund greenway development and so on. We are comfortable that, at any point, we can provide the Committee with a briefing on where that money sits in the chart of accounts. We manage it based on what it is, and it is sometimes difficult to know in advance what is a reasonable proportion of footpath maintenance or construction to assign to the active travel target. As the Department has previously set out, we have taken a working definition of active travel, looked at the activities carried out by the Department for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists, and ascribed a value, for example, from street lighting and from structural maintenance when it comes to footpaths, recognising that it is active travel work. It is not the same as segregated new construction, but we believe that it is a legitimate way to describe it. Forgive me; I do not have the exact percentage in my mind, but we expect roughly between 5% and 6% of the transport budget this year to be spent on active travel. We are absolutely not in the space of trying to shovel money towards active travel without regard for the value. We intend to bring value for money for every pound we spend, and we are happy that all the money we intend to spend this year is in that category.

Mr Stewart: I appreciate how complex it must be, Colin. You have a multitude of factors to consider with active travel, but from a scrutiny point of view it is quite difficult to pin down aspects of it. You are saying that there is no actual line specifically for active travel —

Mr Woods: No. There is not a single budget line.

Mr Stewart: — either capital or resource. How does the directorate assess the spend on its projects if it does not know how much there is to spend? I am sorry if I have not worded that right. It is a complicated beast. I am just trying to work out in my head how they go about ensuring which projects get the go-ahead and how they know that there is money for those projects.

Mr Woods: The majority of new construction of active travel infrastructure is delivered through our active travel team. They manage it centrally using a programme management approach. The budget lines for the active travel grants for work on the road network have an oversight role delivered by Colin Hutchinson, who is the director of the A5 and active travel team. He has a team of staff who manage that programme of work as a programme. When it comes to ascribing parts of costs towards active travel — for example, we are ascribing 50% of street lighting to active travel. It could be argued that it depends on the street light, but we think that that is a reasonable assumption. That money goes to our street lighting team to pay the electric bill for the street lights and carry out the maintenance, and that is where it starts to get harder to put it all in one line. We know that we have to pay the street light bill whether we ascribe it to active travel or not — that is a simplistic description — but that is essentially why parts of the budget are not separated out. We are comfortable that we can separate it out, and we are happy to write to the Committee with what that looks like lifted out of the 2025-26 budget allocations and the anticipated active travel total for the year, assuming nothing changes at monitoring rounds.

Mr Stewart: Apologies, Colin, my little brain is doing somersaults. Finally, effectively, you have a statutory obligation to spend 10% of the budget on active travel, but it is currently between 4·5% and 6%. If you could spend the 10%, you would. What happens if you do spend it? Where does the 4·5% come from that has not been spent elsewhere? Year on year, are you going to have to apply for additional funding to fill the gap that is going to be spent on active travel?

Mr Woods: We recognise the 10% duty, and we have set out plans to grow how much we spend year-on-year to deliver the full amount by 2030. In part, that reflects our capacity to spend money well and wisely, and in part it reflects the fact that, like a major road scheme, an active travel scheme can take three to four years to go through the development process, particularly when we need to vest land for construction. We see the figure ramping up to 10% over time. It is unlikely that we will get much additional funding. The statutory duty did not come with additional funding, so it is 10% of the transport budget for that year. That is why it is hard to say in advance exactly when we are going to hit the target. It requires us to look at what was spent that year, work out 10% and compare that to the planned spend. At the moment, we plan to grow the spending over the years to deliver the 10% target with good value-for-money schemes with positive benefits by 2030.

Mr Stewart: I have one more question, Chair, but I will come back at the end, if you want. I do not want to detain things.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. Thanks, Deputy Chair.

Mr McMurray: Keeping on the theme of active travel — although I do not want to go too far down that rabbit hole — you mentioned a brief on the assignment of the active travel spend. Can that be made available?

Mr Woods: We can write to the Committee and provide a briefing. I am happy for officials to come, if that is of interest.

Mr McMurray: OK, thank you very much.

We have seen "asked for" and "budget", and sometimes there is a 10% or 11% discrepancy there. The representatives from Translink were here last week, and what they had to say was stark. Reference was made to the forthcoming monitoring rounds. What is the view? Will monitoring rounds be happening? Is that likely to happen? In the Department's view, what are the real-life impacts should those not happen?

Ms Anderson: We would normally have three monitoring rounds each year. This year, however, the October monitoring round has not yet been commissioned. That is a decision for the Finance Minister and DOF officials at the appropriate time. Once that is commissioned, we will feed into that and bid for where we know our pressures are, subject to ministerial decisions on those, including the likes of Translink, structural maintenance and other pressures that we are working on at the moment. Normally, there would be a further monitoring round after October, in December or January. We are still looking ahead to those monitoring rounds when they happen.

Mr McMurray: Going back again, I want to link that to NI Water. NI Water was just here. The Department commissioned a forensic review of NI Water's spending. The review report did not appear to find any areas where substantial savings could have been made. Yet, in your opening remarks, you said that the final opening budget fell short of both resource and capital that had been identified for Northern Ireland Water. I am just curious. Are you able to comment on the likelihood of, potentially, another NI Water overspend in the coming financial year?

Mr McGeown: Northern Ireland Water submitted an operating plan to the Department, which it does every year. We scrutinised it and worked closely with Northern Ireland Water on that. Subsequently, it submitted a further, updated version of that a few months later to take account of the budget allocation and changing conditions that have happened in the year. There is an amount of money that Northern Ireland Water sets aside, when it is budgeting at the start of the year, for weather events, and it is based on worst-case scenarios. Those weather episodes have not happened, thank goodness, but if they do, we can bid for that money when needed.

As we sit today, on the resource side, there is a slight gap between what Northern Ireland Water feels it needs to the end of the year and what we have allocated. The chief executive wrote to the permanent secretary recently, however, in the context of the pay awards, to say that she is satisfied that the pay award is affordable and, by dint of that, that she can deliver the services. If there were any pressing events that happened due to weather episodes and the like, she would bid to the Department. Northern Ireland Water believes that it can live within that resource allocation as we sit today. On the capital side, as you know, Northern Ireland Water sent in an operating plan that said £405 million, and we have allocated £361 million. Northern Ireland Water is confident that it can spend what is, in effect, 89% of what it asked for this year.

Mr McMurray: OK. To follow up on that, given the increasing regularity of extreme weather events — you touched on that — what is the Department's wider view of the £5·4 million allocation and how it will be used? What is the view on that?

Ms Anderson: May I double-check that £5·4 million allocation? Are you referring to the flood risk management figure in resource?

Mr McMurray: As he checks his notes —.

Ms Anderson: That is specifically in relation to managing the risk of flooding. That is, effectively, for the routine maintenance that is carried out so that, if there is adverse weather, we are more prepared to manage it.

Mr McMurray: Translink also raised that as an issue. There is a motion down for debate next week on the resilience of infrastructure to respond to adverse weather. Do we need to discuss that in a wider context? Do we need to make more ring-fenced funding available in response to that? In the calendar year we have had storm Éowyn and storm Amy.

Mr McGeown: As you probably know, this is Flood Action Week. The point of that is to heighten awareness that we are living in an environment now that is prone to more storms and weather episodes. We are trying to enable people to get on the front foot so that they are more aware of and alive to the problems that are coming down the track, so that we can work closely with them and intervene earlier by clearing culverts and gullies, etc.
We saw that to good effect a few weeks ago with storm Amy, when staff were out on the ground from as early as the Thursday, ahead of the storm that came in on the Friday, to make sure that we cleared as much as possible, given that the leaves continued to fall off trees, etc. So I think we are taking a much more proactive approach, and that is borne out by the work that is being developed on the flood forecasting centre, etc. The Infrastructure family is more alert and alive to it, not least because we have had a number of incidents in recent years, so our preparedness is better.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Just before I bring in Harry, I think we are living in a world where both presentations are amalgamated: the budget final decisions and the spending review budget sustainability plan. Is that the understanding of the officials?

Ms Anderson: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): There is nodding going on there, to try to bring us some way back on track. I just make members aware of that. That is the territory that we are in.

Mr Harvey: Good to see you all. My question is on the DVA. If the new super-centres eventually open, how will it affect costs? Are these centres expected to be profitable, or will costs increase? Do you know?

Ms Anderson: The DVA has a slightly different status in the public sector. It is referred to as a "trading fund". The requirement is for it just to break even and effectively manage its own costs year-on-year.

Mr Harvey: It basically stays the same.

Ms Anderson: That is the way it should be, the way it should operate.

Mr Harvey: Even with the new centres and if it needs new staff? A good answer. Thank you. That is all, Chair.

Mr McNulty: Thanks, folks. I am sorry if I missed this when I was out. The Department has allocated £5·4 million for central corporate charges. What does that relate to?

Ms Anderson: That is our range of corporate charges that we are required to pay to other Departments, such as the Department of Finance, for things like HR, IT and central services that it delivers to all Departments.

Mr McNulty: The roads maintenance budget is £52·2 million. How does that compare to last year?

Mr Woods: We are expecting an increase on last year's essential maintenance budget from a resource perspective. We hope that that will allow us to be a bit more proactive through the winter in particular.

Mr McNulty: So there is an uplift on last year?

Mr Woods: A small uplift, yes.

Mr McNulty: Percentage-wise, how does that compare to what you actually need?

Mr Woods: We need somewhere in the region of £66 million or £67 million for essential maintenance. I think that £52 million was the opening allocation this year. That is why we have our limited service policy on essential maintenance, because we cannot afford to deliver the normal maintenance service that would take the full £66 million. We also have to absorb costs related to weather events and so on, as Northern Ireland Water does.

Mr McNulty: The A5 project is obviously stalled, but significant money is still being spent. What is your forecast for the money that will be spent in the coming year, given that the project has stalled?

Mr Woods: It is in the region of about £60 million, and that reflects costs incurred in preparation for construction and other costs from now on, such as the dealings with landowners that the Department is engaged in and also the legal costs of taking the appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Mr McNulty: Without a shovel in the ground next year, potentially you will still have spent £60 million?

Mr Woods: Technically, the advanced works did involve some shovels in the ground,

so forgive me. However, I take your point. We had intended to be in construction of the main scheme this year. That would have started in the summer, and it is disappointing that we are not doing it. It means that we will spend something in the region of £100 million less than we anticipated but, yes, there are still costs being incurred. It is one of the reasons why the Department was disappointed by the judgement. Delay to the project incurs additional cost, and it would be better to get on and get the value of the main construction and spend the money on that. That would absolutely have been our preference.

Mr McNulty: To what extent are you concerned that that stalling project will have a knock-on effect on multiple other projects, which will then have a knock-on effect on your ability to spend money that you have been allocated? Where does it end?

Mr Woods: It is difficult to know exactly where it ends until we get the judgement from the Court of Appeal. As I said a couple of weeks ago, a wide range of scenarios could be the outcome of that appeal, ranging from reinstating the original decision to proceed to leaving the judgement exactly as it was at the High Court, or it could be something different. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to work out what the implications of the judgement will be until we know what the judgement is. As the Minister said, nothing is off the table when it comes to exploring the options and trying to prepare for a range of scenarios that could come from that judgement.

Mr McNulty: The implications could be catastrophic and far-reaching for roads construction.

Mr Woods: It is certainly possible that we will see a scenario where roads construction remains very difficult and challenging, and you would expect that to impact on our ability to spend and to progress the schemes that we want to progress. That is one of the possible outcomes, yes.

Mr McNulty: These are very worrying times for the Department.

Mr Woods: We would certainly prefer to be in construction on the A5. As I say, it is disappointing that we are not.

Miss Brogan: Thanks again, officials, for coming this afternoon. I will go back to the point about the A5. I said this yesterday. The reality is that the project has been delayed because of legal objections, and, for all the multitude of reasons that we have outlined previously, we and the Department would rather see the project being progressed. It is not very helpful to have this narrative about the cost when we are all in agreement that the project should be moved forward.

I want to ask a few questions about the Budget. Obviously, this is Community Transport Week, and the Minister has invested £1 million in community transport. Can anyone explain to me the benefit that that will have for the very important work that those involved in community transport do?

Mr Rice: Sorry, I did not pick up your question.

Miss Brogan: What impact will that £1 million investment have on community transport services throughout the North?

Mr Rice: Sorry, Nicola, my hearing was not great there.

We all welcomed the Minister's additional allocation of just over £1 million for community transport this year. That brings the allocation to about £5·5 million. A lot of that additional funding was about trying to cover additional cost that community transport providers were incurring. They had to deal with inflation, the minimum wage and National Insurance contributions. All of that needed to be covered as part of that additional allocation. In terms of outcomes, last year and in previous years, we were looking at about 250,000 passenger journeys or trips. We are not quite sure what the outcome will be this year. The allocation went to community transport providers in the summer, and they are working through that. We expect there to be an additional number of trips, but we are not able to quantify that at this stage.

Miss Brogan: That is OK. Given the National Insurance hikes and that type of thing, that additional investment should make the whole service more sustainable, so that is good.

Finally, I want to touch on the other £1 million that has been invested in the all-Ireland strategic rail review. That was discussed in the Assembly this week, and, obviously, people want to see that progress. Can you provide me with any more information on that, please?

Mr Rice: Sure. In order to take forward the all-island strategic rail review, there are a number of different strands. Department officials are working with their colleagues in the Department of Transport to look at the prioritisation of the projects in the strategy and how they could be taken forward in future years. They are looking primarily at what can be progressed in the next 10 years. That prioritisation is likely to be published this side of Christmas, and that will set the direction of travel. In parallel, the Department and Translink will take forward a number of feasibility studies in and around electrification from Belfast to Dublin and also some feasibility studies on Portadown to Armagh, Portadown to Derry and the Knockmore link. In order to continue work on those feasibility studies, the Minister has ring-fenced £1 million from the capital programme budget this year to enable Translink to take those projects to the next stage. It does not bring them to what we call the next milestone, but it enables work to continue on those projects.

Miss Brogan: That is fair enough. Obviously, it is very important to have the research and data there for when it gets to a later stage. We will wait for that prioritisation paper to come before Christmas. That is helpful. Thank you, all.

Mr Dunne: Thanks, folks, for your presentation. I have a couple of questions. Over the past year, a number of people have briefed us on the Reservoirs Act (Northern Ireland) 2015. There is a bit of concern in the sector and in DFI about the scale of some of the challenges it presents. Can you tell me a wee bit more about the funding allocation for that and for the grant scheme in particular? Are we at that stage yet?

Ms Anderson: No, we are not quite at that stage yet. No funding has been factored in.

an update.

Mr McGeown: Stephen, we are working on a business case for that, but it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, insofar as unless and until the legislation is fully implemented, including the five pieces that the Committee will have heard about, the grant scheme cannot be put into effect. One follows the other because it is about inspection. Cover has to be given for it to allow us to do that. We are doing the work behind the scenes. We continue to work on the business case, and we will look at what that entails for the inspection process. It will go only so far, however, until the Act is over the line. We need the Act to be over the line.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that. It is an important issue, as so many issues are.

I will go back to the A5. I do not want to open up that discussion, because we will be here all week or more, but, looking more widely at infrastructure, has any assessment been made of the impact of the judgement and the appeal on other projects?

Mr Woods: Every other project is proceeding along a particular timeline. When we get to decision points, we have to understand what the implications of the A5 judgement are and what the implications of the appeal judgement might be. That is a relevant part of the decision-making process. The Department and the Minister will take that into account when decision points are reached.

Mr Dunne: As the road is still in a dangerous condition, could any of the money that has been allocated be used for an interim measure, given that the ongoing legal action will continue at least until next year before the decision can be made? Has any progress been made on that?

Mr Woods: We do maintenance on the A5 every year. We do resurfacing schemes, and we attempt to introduce safety upgrades where we believe that they are justified and proportionate. No combination of those things is as good as building a new offline dual carriageway, with the safety benefits that that will bring, but we are still looking at the existing road and all the roads that we are responsible for to see what sensible intervention we can make now with the budget that we have. Certainly, if additional budget is available for reallocation, as we said, we will make strong bids for how that can be spent on road maintenance across the network.

Mr Dunne: I hope that the October monitoring round will offer something. What would be the Department's top three priorities? Is it too premature to tell us?

Mr Woods: That will be a decision for the Minister.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Go on, Colin. Give us something.

Mr Woods: I will just talk about road maintenance. The opening budget for structural maintenance was around a third of the requirement. It may not have been as low as that, but it was close to it. All our teams across the network have schemes ready to go if funding is available. We do not wait to identify what a scheme would look like to advance it to delivery stage; we could be on the ground across the network in days, if there were additional budget for structural maintenance. It would probably be easier to give you the top 300 rather than the top three.

Mr Dunne: My final point is on road safety advertising. The increased budget for that, with £1·9 million from the Department being topped up with £500,000 from the road safety partnership, is welcome. There is evidence to show that, when the most has been spent on advertising, the number of deaths has reduced. There is a correlation.

Mr Stewart: Some of the questions have strayed into the information gathering exercise. Will we do that as a separate piece?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I was going to make that point, John. The sustainability spending review piece is in the pack. I think that the intention is to have it all together. Do members have any questions on that? I will start with John because I sense that he has a question.

Mr Stewart: The first question is one that I did not come to in my earlier remarks. I am not sure whether you can even address it today. It is probably for you, Susan.
Has an assessment been done of the value and the amount of outstanding land that DFI currently owns that has been previously vested to deliver projects? In my constituency, for example, both the A2 and A8 took significant chunks of land, and, some 15 years on, there are now abandoned houses sitting there. I assume that they are under the ownership of DFI. They have a commercial value, and they could be sold to tidy up the area and to free up much-needed resources in the Department. How regularly is that looked at, and what is the assessed value, across the country, of that land?

Ms Anderson: I do not know off the top of my head. It is valued every year and forms part of our valuation in our annual accounts. We can certainly write back with that figure.

Mr Stewart: I know that the constituents who live alongside that patch would like to see those houses regenerated and sold. If that money were reinvested in the roads, that would be a nice little Brucie bonus.

Mr Woods: From a policy perspective, we do not seek to hold on to that land. Once the scheme is constructed, it moves through the normal disposal process. That can take time, and there is a number of prescriptions on what we need to do to dispose of government land, but, as Susan said, the value of it is assessed regularly.

Mr Stewart: Seemingly, for some reason, Colin, it is taking significant time, particularly as the A2 was finished in 2015.

Mr Woods: Yes.

Mr Stewart: Ten years on, there are still blighted houses sitting there, so that would be a nice assessment. Are we moving on to the next stage, Chair?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I had, maybe, just one more question on this. This was probably the meat of it all, but there is the spending review piece as well. To tie it off, it is my understanding from your presentation, Susan — correct me if I am wrong — that, from the 2024-25 budget to the 2025-26 budget, resource went up by around 14% and capital went up 12%. Do those figures ring a bell?

Ms Anderson: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Sometimes, Finance Ministers can allocate that in a range of ways. For this year's budget, 2025-26, did the Department get a total figure and was then instructed by DOF to spend it any way it wanted, leaving aside the ring-fenced stuff? Did DOF break down budgets as to where it expected you to spend?

Ms Anderson: No. For resource, it is a general allocation, and it is for Ministers to decide how they allocate that within their Departments.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): On the figure of 14% in resource, this is maybe a stretchy question for you. That is an uplift of 14% on 2024-25. On how you or the Minister approach the allocation process for that, were there any priorities that you identified for that additional spend, or was it averaged across a range of spending areas?

Ms Anderson: Again, it is based on the Minister's priorities. We presented the Minister with requirements across each business area and then the decisions were taken by the Minister on how to allocate that and what to fund.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Is it fair to say that, if I were to get out my calculator and look at the differential between the figures in the 2024-25 opening resource budget and those in the 2025-26 opening resource budget, I would be able to identify what the Minister's spending priorities are?

Ms Anderson: You will be able to identify where spend was allocated. Obviously, there are a number of contractual commitments that we have to meet as well.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Inescapable costs.

Ms Anderson: Exactly. That includes our contractual PPP commitments and electricity, which we have to meet. That needs to be factored into that as well.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): You will be glad to know that I did not do that calculation. I just read it out to you and found out what the Minister's priorities were. That is useful in itself. On the uplift from last year, an average of 13% is not too bad. I understand the particular pressures that DFI is under.

Thank you very much.