Effort to secure more funding from London for budget is ‘right fight’ – O’Neill

The Stormont Executive is “fighting the right fight” to secure further funding from London before agreeing its annual budget, Michelle O’Neill has said.Northern Ireland’s First Minister was challenged by Opposition leader Matthew O’Toole as Stormont approaches six months of operation without a budget for this financial year.Stormont ministers have said they cannot strike a budget for 2026/27 without additional financial support from Westminster.Devolved departments are currently allowed to spend up to 95% of last year’s funding in the absence of ministers agreeing the budget.The Executive remains in negotiation with the Treasury over funding.Earlier this month, the Government upped a financial offer to Stormont ministers to £1.5 billion, in a bid to break an impasse over the devolved region’s budget, but Ms O’Neill said it was not enough.Stormont Opposition leader Matthew O’Toole (PA)PA WireSpeaking in the Assembly chamber on Monday during questions for the First Minister, Ms O’Neill said she was “determined to take it to the end of the line”.Read MoreMr O’Toole told Ms O’Neill that no first minister or finance minister in Scotland or Wales “has ever refused to set a budget halfway through a financial year”.He urged her to “rule out a preposterous and grotesque situation in which the UK Government has to pass a budget here”.He said: “Could you confirm that, come what may, you will fight for the best possible settlement, and the Opposition will agree with you on that, but you will not allow London to set a budget for this place because we don’t take our responsibilities.”Ms O’Neill said “every effort is being deployed by all four parties in the Executive to get a budget”.She said Scotland and Wales “got a fairer settlement”.“The people here deserve exactly the same,” she said, claiming that under the same arrangement as Scotland they would have “an additional £3 billion in our public services”.“Our job is to maximise what we can achieve from the British Government to actually invest in their public services,” she said.“We are in the middle of a negotiation with the British Government. We have made some improvements. We have made some advances. It’s still not enough for the four parties of the Executive.“So we’re going to continue to work on that and I hope that we can very quickly get to the point where we actually have an adequate budget that allows us to do all the things that we all, in this Chamber, speak about day after day, around investing in our public services, bringing down our waiting lists, ensuring we are investing in special education needs, doing more in childcare, doing all the things that we want to do.“But we’ll only do that if we have sufficient funding in which to do so.“So I think the fight that we have right now is the right fight, and I’m determined to take it to the end of the line.”