Speaking in the Assembly on the Stormont Budget for 2015/16, TUV leader, Jim Allister majored on the huge level of debt that is being racked up to keep Stormont going, namely, £1.8billion.
The TUV leader also chided the SDLP, UUP and Alliance for their failure to follow through on their votes against the budget by going into Opposition, describing the three parties as providing mere “doormats” in the executive for the DUP and Sinn Fein.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
” The smugness that Sinn Féin obviously feels about an aspect of this matter is pretty evident in the first two or three lines of the motion. And well might it feel smug, because it is quite clear that it drew other parties very much on to its ground. It is not so long ago, in the weeks running up to Christmas, that the DUP, for example, was vehement in saying, “There is no more money. We have to live within our means. We are part of a nation state in which we have to carry part of the burden”. Then, suddenly, the Ulster-nationalist tendency in that party took over, and its members found themselves willingly singing off the Sinn Féin hymn sheet, saying, “Give us more. Fill our huge begging bowl. We do not need to worry about the national interest. We just need more”. Of course, the real driving force was the fact that the edifices of this place were crumbling and going to fall. That was the factor that drove the DUP on to the Sinn Féin ground on the issue. And there they seemingly remain.
“We then move to a Budget, and I have to say that I struggle to think of another example, and I do not think that there is one, of anywhere in the world where a party can be in government, vote against the Budget and stay in government. I have to say to the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the Ulster Unionists that I am sure that you were quite right to vote against this Budget, but there is a certain compelling, indisputable logic of that position, and it is that your place is outside not inside government. I only wish that those parties, if they had the conviction to vote against the Budget, had the courage of that conviction to carry it through to its logical conclusion. Sadly, that does not yet seem to be the position. I say to them this: you are but doormats of the DUP/Sinn Féin quango that runs this Government. You are just there to make up the numbers, and they wipe their feet on you every time. When, oh when, are you going to rediscover self-respect and dignity and stand up for yourselves in the only place that you can stand up for yourselves, outside that miserable Executive?
“This will not trouble Sinn Féin, because it is quite happy to bankrupt Northern Ireland; the quicker the better, as far as the fulfilment of its political mantra about failed political entities is concerned. This is a Budget that is burying Northern Ireland in debt. I invite any Member to look at paragraph 3.61 of the Budget document and to discover that in 2015-16, our projected level of indebtedness is £1·8 billion. For this tiny, little place — Northern Ireland — we are hanging round the necks of our people that millstone of £1·8 billion of debt that has to be paid back with interest. That paragraph points out that that amount equates to £1,002 for every man, woman and child in Northern Ireland.
“So, this is a Budget of failure by the parties of failure.”