Northern Ireland justice department is ‘systemically underfunded,’ Naomi Long says
Justice minister Naomi Long has warned of the budget challenges faced by her department.The Alliance Party leader has previously said her department is “systemically underfunded” and continues to face cash shortages.Speaking to the Irish News, the minister warned of a tougher financial outlook for her department. “The last ten years we have seen our budget share decline from 11 to 8 per cent and yet the amount of complexity of crime, the cost of investigation, the cost of prosecution, the cost of incarceration are all increasing,” she said. Justice Minister Naomi Long speaks to the Irish News. PICTURE:BRIAN LINCOLN “And so there are real challenges for us in justice in terms of managing our budget but as a minister I have a duty to manage my budget because anything I overspend in one year ends up coming off the top of our budget the next year, which would only compound the problems that we’re having.” The minister said she remains optimistic that PSNI officers will this year receive a pay award.Read more: Justice minister Naomi Long concerned she may have been the victim of state surveillance after PSNI spy report publishedRead more: There were ‘brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts who did not know they were police officers’ - The damage done to Catholic recruitment by the PSNI data breachRead more: ‘I find it quite humiliating that my neighbours were disrupted’ - Naomi Long says wake in her street affected by protest at her house She said that she is also hopeful that her department “will be able to manage the pressures that we’re facing” adding that “realistically we have now reached the point where if I try to push down on cost in one area it will just pop up somewhere else”. Ms Long said her department has been “very frugal and have been very careful with our resources”. She said tough decisions are constantly being taken by her officials. But she added: “Health takes over 50 percent of the total block grant, (it’s) projected by, I think it’s something like 2035, if it continues to grow at the rate that it does at the moment it would consume all of the block grant.“Now that’s not a sustainable model for delivering health and the truth is the outcomes are not better than anywhere else, so they’re worse.”She said other Stormont departments also face scrutiny. “We need to be serious about education which seems to be on the same trajectory,” she said. “They’ve seen a 70 per cent uplift in their allocation, in the same time we have seen a decline in ours, and yet they are still projecting a £250 million pound overspend at the end of the year.“So, there’s got to be some really serious conversations about what is it we want ministers to do and do we understand that we can’t just keep doing new things without stopping doing some older things, and I’m okay with that.”
