Finance: 2020-21 November COVID-19 Funding

Part of Ministerial Statements – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 1:45 pm on 23 November 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Conor Murphy Conor Murphy Sinn Féin 1:45, 23 November 2020

This is all Barnett consequential money. We used the October monitoring round savings to allocate to departmental pressures and to keep them separate from these allocations. Of course, I anticipate further surrenders of money in the January monitoring round, which will be used to meet some departmental pressures.

I intend to bring a paper to the Executive next week on airport funding. The Member may know that, when we made a previous payment to airports, the International Airport did not at that stage require any assistance from us. It is clear that it now does, and we are working through that with it. The payment that he refers to for City of Derry Airport is an outstanding payment; it is not new as part of this allocation. It is an outstanding payment that is coming from money that was held in reserves for the airports; it has been sitting in reserves for some time. Some £10 million was sitting in reserves for airports, and I hope by next week to be able to identify which Department is to pay that out — it will probably be Infrastructure — and work it through with Belfast International Airport, the City Airport and City of Derry Airport.