Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Finance – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:30 pm on 8 June 2021.
Conor Murphy
Sinn Féin
2:30,
8 June 2021
The Member will know that there was some financial support offered up specifically for those sectors. There was quite a bit of wrangling between a couple of Departments as to who had responsibility for all of that. When Infrastructure eventually stepped up to take that responsibility, finance was made available. It was not all used, certainly not in relation to coaches. At the end of the financial year, we had additional COVID money and tried to get Departments to come back in for more money where it could be used. That was not the case for the Department for Infrastructure in relation to this.
I am happy to discuss at any time the requirement for additional support. We have allocated most of the COVID money that we have available to us. We are not expecting any more to be made available, unlike last year when we received updated tranches over the year. If any of it is not used and is surrendered or if more is made available to us, I would be very happy to look at any urgent schemes for which a Minister might think it is important to tap into that.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
