Part of Oral Answers to Questions — The Executive Office – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:15 pm on 10 June 2024.
The Member will be aware of how challenging the current Budget is, and the number-one priority initially must be to try to maintain our public services to the best standard that we possibly can within the budgetary envelope. That will inevitably limit the discretion and flexibility that we may have for new policies, but we are very clear that this is not about trying to do everything and put everything into a Programme for Government. We want to prioritise, and, as I said, we have highlighted a number of those issues already, such as the lack of affordable childcare, which puts pressure on families throughout Northern Ireland. We all know about the challenges in the health service. Let us make no mistake: there is not a significant amount of money that gives flexibility for a huge range of new issues. This must be about supporting our existing public services, trying to ensure the transformation of and absolutely necessary improvement in those and continuing to build for the opportunity when further investment is available to us as an Executive for new and prioritised areas.