Draft Budget

Part of Committee Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 4:00 am on 27 November 2007.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Sue Ramsey Sue Ramsey Sinn Féin 4:00, 27 November 2007

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. To set the context, I must repeat some of the comments that I made yesterday during the debate on the draft Programme for Government.

The Committee is now well into the process of responding to the draft Budget; however, as I said yesterday, that work will not be complete until tomorrow when the Committee will have an opportunity to discuss final matters with the Minister.

Following on from what Mark Durkan has said; this is a take-note debate on a draft Budget that has been published for consultation. It is important that our concerns as individual Members, Committee members, or Chairpersons should be raised as part of the consultation process.

When the Committee for Employment and Learning took evidence from departmental representatives on the draft Budget, the representatives expressed the view that they had achieved a mid-ranking result as regards CSR bid outcomes. They believe that they won on a number of issues, but that there were others in which they could have achieved better outcomes. The Committee’s overarching sense is that the allocation, while strong in places, will not be sufficient to meet the goals and targets in the draft Programme for Government for economic development.

In particular, although the Committee welcomes the emphasis on an issue that was to be delivered by the Department, there is concern that the moneys allocated to delivering the skills requirement could fall short of achieving the synergy that is necessary between business growth and skills development.

The Committee is concerned that unless the skills base exists to pre-empt, or meet, opportunities, investors could be frustrated and opportunities could be missed. A number of specific issues illustrate that concern. Yesterday, during the debate on the draft Programme for Government, I mentioned the discrepancy between the programme’s goals relating to R&D and innovation, and the apparent lack of resources — or at least, the lack of clarity on resources. The moneys available for innovation appear to be inadequate to advance the cutting-edge research in universities and in the private sector that the Executive tell us is required to bring about the transformation of our traditional economy into a knowledge-based one.

The Committee is aware that there are opportunities available, for example, via the Science Foundation Ireland, but they are narrow. The Committee urges the Executive to be creative in ensuring that investment in research and development is prioritised in the short and medium term to secure longer-term economic gains.

The commitment to PhDs in the Programme for Government is an unfunded bid. The Committee has heard that a proportion of the funding for innovation will be utilised to meet that goal, but we are concerned that that would spread an already thin amount of money even more thinly. The Department said that there is a small amount of unallocated money from bids that could be used for PhDs, and the Committee would welcome any movement in that direction.

Since devolution, much has been made of the need to re-skill the workforce. The recent Leitch Review sets the context and establishes challenging targets. However, a comprehensive spending review bid from the Department for foreign direct investment for the employer support programme for further education has not been funded. The Committee is concerned that we could be facing a serious gap in adult training and apprenticeships generally.

In addition, the critical sector initiatives, which is a programme designed specifically to pre-empt and prepare for foreign direct investment, has received only £9 million over three years and nothing in the first year. The Department’s original bid was for £24 million over three years, so less than 40% of the bid has been achieved. [Interruption.]

That was Sir Reg Empey thanking me for fighting his corner.

A major part of the Leitch Review focuses on essential skills. As I said yesterday, the Committee has grave concerns on the Budget allocation to deliver on this vital component. The Department has said that, to an extent, it speculated and overbid — which the Finance Minister will appreciate — which, looking closely at the numbers, may be the case. Nevertheless, the Department said that it believes that it has sufficient funding for essential skills. I will ensure that the Committee keeps this issue live on our work programme to assess whether that is indeed the case.

The Committee fully supports the Department’s bid to include information and communications technologies as a third essential skill. However, only £5 million of an £11·4 million bid has been received, which is approximately 40% over the next three years. The most worrying aspect is that there is not even a baseline budget dedicated to that issue and nothing has been secured for the first year. The Committee is concerned that the Department will struggle to deliver on that important programme.

In addition to those broad economic and skills-related themes, there are other draft Budget issues that I would like to raise.

Issues arose at Committee meetings relating to further and higher education organisations that the Department says are autonomous. Although the Committee accepts that universities and colleges should be commercially autonomous, it is concerned that the Department could be losing control of significant social goals. That may be an issue for the further education sector rather than the universities. For example, concession rates offered by colleges are an important way of facilitating training for particular groups, such as people on benefits, yet there is no consistency in applying concession rates. The Committee has a general concern that budgetary autonomy may not always work to deliver important goals related to social cohesion. The Committee wishes to see clear incentives for further and higher education institutions to tackle social inequalities, and we would like to see those evidenced soon.

Turning to issues in higher education, the Committee has concerns that potential changes and the widening of the upper and lower income thresholds would require an additional £18 million over the next three years. The Committee has been informed that bids to meet this need are unfunded. The Committee does not wish to see any detriment to local students’ maintenance arrangements and would ask that this situation be urgently addressed.