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Budget (Northern Ireland) Order 2006

I thank the noble Lord for his customary presentation of these orders, which is extremely clear. I join him in regretting that today we are, once again, attempting to debate the Northern Ireland Budget. Of all things, it is a subject which ought to be solely in the hands of the devolved government. The sadness is that we are here yet again, and I have to tell you that I am no better an accountant—or a public affairs accountant—today than I was last year or the year before or the year before that. So my contribution may be less than meaningless, for which I apologise. However, there are a few areas worth mentioning. First, while living there, having read and having heard from the Minister, I have noticed that considerable money is being spent on the infrastructure, particularly roads. The Minister mentioned the improvements to school buildings and, I hope, hospital buildings, so there is significant expenditure there, which must be welcomed. I am concerned that there is a single sum, which I understand has to be divided among departments. As the Minister said, priorities have changed. Certain things have been moved up, which means that certain others have been moved down. We still suffer, I am sure, from European directives, such as the WEEE directive, which must cost a lot of money to meet, if, indeed, we meet it. We have serious problems now and will have in the future with the disposal of waste, which is another directive on which we have to follow and obey our European masters. We know that we still have problems with our beaches, sewage, a certain amount of pollution, and so on, even though the population is small and the area very rural. If the Minister were able to make a few comments on the Government’s plans to tackle this side of the problem, I would be grateful. The debate goes on below the level of this place on schools and education. I hope that future plans for education provision in Northern Ireland—destructive though they seem from what I have heard; I hope that we are able to stop them—will not be wasteful of financial resources and that the Government will find a way of making schooling in Northern Ireland more efficient in terms of cost than it is today. I remember that the first time this Budget was introduced six months or a year ago, there was a debate on the closure of schools with only four or five pupils. I hope that ways have been found through those problems so that parents are satisfied that things are being done more efficiently. A significant worry remains in Northern Ireland about the high proportion of government employment. The last time I looked at this, it was running at 33.5 per cent of those in employment being directly employed by the Government. I would be interested to see whether the percentage has reduced. I know that the Minister wishes to introduce some restructuring of the administration of Northern Ireland. For me, that cannot come quick enough. Perhaps the Minister can give us an update of progress on the reform of administration. On the whole, having read the Hansard report from the other end, I did not pick out as significant anything other than the issues I have mentioned, except possibly rates. However, I shall leave what I have to say about the rates situation in Northern Ireland, including water rates and their impact on the local population and economy, for our next debate.