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Simon Hamilton to give ministers details of next year's Stormont budget Stormont executive: Budget plan contains £700m cuts
(about 4 hours later)
Executive ministers will receive details of next year's budget from the finance minister later. Northern Ireland's finance minister has proposed cuts of more than £700m to Stormont departments in a budget plan circulated to his executive colleagues.
Simon Hamilton will send a budget paper to ministers after the Treasury agreed to make a £100m loan to Stormont earlier this month. Simon Hamilton said it was a "critical week for Northern Ireland".
It depends on the executive agreeing a new budget by the end of this week. If a draft budget for 2015/2016 is not agreed by Friday, Stormont will lose a £100m emergency loan from the Treasury.
The loan was supported by the DUP and Sinn Féin, but opposed by the Alliance Party, SDLP and UUP. The loan was designed to ease pressures for the remainder of this year. Under Mr Hamilton's plan, education is not spared the impact of savings.
The budget paper is expected to outline the financial pressures facing the executive and detail where the finance minister believes savings can be made. He said negotiations this week would be difficult, but he was optimistic a deal could be agreed.
Mr Hamilton said £700m would be a "conservative enough estimate".
"The pressures we are facing are in excess of that and that necessitates tough choices on behalf of me and executive colleagues," he said.
"It is very, very difficult to take that sort of quantity of money out of our budget in Northern Ireland without there being difficult decisions."
His comments come after Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers said Stormont parties have been told that the job of resolving budget questions will be taken from them, unless they agree a draft budget by the end of the month.
Ms Villiers said that while there was some flexibility in the process of consultation, it was crucial the parties stuck to the timetable.
"Unless they get on and agree a draft budget, ultimately when we get to April, we'll end up with civil servants making the allocations on budgets," she said.
"We'll end up with a situation where Northern Ireland's elected leaders have the power to resolve budget questions taken from them.
"No-one wants that. We want democratic decisions taken over the budget and that's why they need to get on and get this draft budget agreed by the end of this month."