T1. Mr O'Toole asked the Minister of Finance, after declaring an interest as the parent of a child at one of the affected schools, to state which Minister — Finance or Education — is correct about who made the decision to remove funding from integrated schools, given that, having asked the Finance Minister and the Education Minister separate questions about the date on which they were informed that the UK Government had removed the ring fence from Fresh Start funding, the Education Minister said that he had been informed by the Finance Minister on 13 February that the ring fence had been removed, while the Finance Minister said that she informed the Education Minister and other Executive colleagues on 5 March 2024. (AQT 151/22-27)

The response to the question for written answer that the Member will have received will reflect the official correspondence that we received from Treasury about the financial package and any moneys that had been unring-fenced. That is the date in my response to which the Member is referring. I cannot answer for the Education Minister on the correspondence to which he is referring. As I have said previously, the decision on unring-fencing any moneys was taken by the Treasury, not the Executive. We are therefore left to deal with the consequences of that.

Minister, you said that you are left dealing with the consequences of the removal of the ring fence, but one of the consequences is not that the Executive have to remove money. It is really important to nail that myth. A ring fence being removed does not remove the money from those schools. That was a decision made by the Executive. Was it made by the Education Minister or was it made by you in conjunction with the Education Minister? It is really important that we be precise about that. Removing the ring fence does not cut the funding. That was a decision that the Executive made.

I understand that the Member is referring to the £150 million of Fresh Start funding. Again, I cannot speak on behalf of the Education Minister, but I understand that the 10 integrated schools were part of the Department of Education's capital programme. As the Member will know, the Executive agreed to earmark funding for the Strule campus. The unring-fenced funding in financial capital has made been available to the Executive as resource, not capital, money, so it is all there in the package. We have considerable challenges and pressures facing our resource budget, so it will be for the Executive to decide how to allocate funding as part of the Budget process.