Finance Minister Conor Murphy has today announced £45 million of funding for teachers' pay, the Housing Executive, Translink and the Driver Vehicle Agency (DVA).
These allocations are funded from remaining available resources for 2021-22 and will reduce the risk of money being returned to Treasury while also still leaving £50 million to carry-forward into 2022-23.
Announcing the funding, Minister Murphy said:
“I have considered this matter at length and while it steps outside the normal processes to allocate funding without Executive approval, I feel it would be unforgivable if funding that could be used to support local people and services was returned to the Treasury because of the absence of an Executive.
“Having received legal advice on the options available to me to address the unallocated funding and sought the views of Ministers, I intend to allocate £45 million to the departments that had sought further funding.
“The Department for Infrastructure will receive £16.0 million to provide additional funding for Translink and address increased energy costs and a reduction in testing income for DVA.
“The Department for Communities will receive £16.0 million for the Housing Executive for the implementation of the Tower Block Action Plan and Thermal Insulation Programmes.
“And the Department of Education will receive £13.0 million, meeting their request in full, for teaching pay pressures.”
Minister Murphy concluded:
“Following these allocations and additional funding received from Treasury relating to the Council Tax rebate and the repayable energy discount, there is at least £300 million of additional funding next year, over and above the draft Budget position. The legal advice I have received is clear that regrettably, it is not possible to allocate this funding until such times as an Executive is re-established.”
Following the January Monitoring Round £95.2 million of Resource DEL funding remained. The permitted carry forward under Budget Exchange Limit for Resource DEL is £104.3 million.
Given historic levels of departmental underspends that typically emerge at the end of the financial year, the Finance Minister has today announced further allocations to bring the available resources down to around £50 million to minimise the risk that this limit is exceeded meaning monies would have to be returned to Treasury.