Housing Associations: Reclassification

Part of Private Members' Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 1:30 pm on 10 October 2016.

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Photo of Stephen Farry Stephen Farry Alliance 1:30, 10 October 2016

For better or worse, this is the only opportunity that the Assembly has had to discuss the issues. If we had what should have been the process in the Chamber of a ministerial statement, we could have done this in a much more structured way, akin to what is happening in Cardiff and Edinburgh, which have shown the way forward in that regard. Lest the current Minister thinks that we are picking on him, although this is the current example, it is a trend across the board. He is not the only one who is falling into the situation of not having the proper mechanisms of accountability. We are having the debate today, and we are able to raise the issues of process and the substance.

My final point is that there are issues in other parts of government where the way that ONS works and how we treat parts of the public sector allow or constrain the ability to borrow and raise money. I encourage the Executive to have a wider look across the piece in that regard. In doing so, we may find, particularly in these very straitened economic times, that there are resources available to us without having to raise revenue directly from the hard-pressed householders across Northern Ireland.