Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
15 July 2026
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Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Actual start House of Commons
20:54 - 22:01
Speaker 1
Order. Welcome to the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee. This is our session on Northern Ireland Executive Finances. We are joined by Sir Robert Chote, Chair of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, Maureen O'Reilly, member of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, and Jonathan McAdams. So welcome everybody.
So we are also joined today by Diane Forsythe MLA, our deputy chair of the Northern Ireland Assembly Committee for Finance, who will be asking questions on both of the panels that we've got this morning. The Committee for Finance has been undertaking valuable scrutiny of the ongoing absence of a budget in Northern Ireland, and we wanted to formally join with them today as we take evidence from yourselves and the Secretary of State. So thank you Diane for joining us. Sir Robert, without a budget, departments are now reliant on limited contingency funding provided through the vote on account and the Northern Ireland Act. What impact will this have on the provision of public services?
22:01 - 22:50
Speaker 2
Thank you Chair, well thank you very much indeed for the invitation, it's a pleasure to be here as always.
Clearly, it's not unprecedented, but it's regrettable that the Executive hasn't managed to agree a budget even at this stage into the financial year. That's not good for accountability, for ability to plan services and delivery and reform. And clearly, it's an environment that is not conducive to the best possible fiscal and public service decisions. The immediate impact is that under the Vote on Account at the moment, there's the ability to spend essentially 45% of the amount of resource and cash that was allocated under the previous year, in the Budget Act for the previous year.
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