Taxpayers will feel brunt of direct rule, says Durkan

Northern Ireland taxpayers could bear the brunt of a UK Treasury drive to make them pay more for public services unless devolution returns quickly, SDLP leader Mark Durkan warned today.

The former Stormont Deputy First Minister and Finance Minister told a briefing of trade unionists and members of the community and voluntary sector that the Treasury was now calling the shots under direct rule.

He said: “Direct rule is getting ever more direct. The British Treasury is calling the shots like never before. They want to ‘put manners’ on our public spending now that suspension gives them the chance.

“That’s why, if we let suspension drag on, we are all threatened with top-up fees, water charges and worse local services.”

In a hard hitting attack on direct rule, the SDLP leader said the Northern Ireland Office ministers had neither the clout nor the will to prevent the Treasury from pursuing its agenda of cutting government spending.

Mr Durkan also claimed the direct rule ministers were not interested in what the Northern Ireland parties or social partners had to say.

Noting last week’s comments by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in Omagh that the peace process would remain in freefall until the Democratic Unionists changed their approach to talks, the SDLP leader said his party’s proposals for a temporary form of devolution could break that fall and hold back the Treasury’s cutting agenda.

Under the plan unveiled earlier this month, the SDLP the Assembly should be recalled.

If Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) could not elect First and Deputy First Ministers and form an executive, the party has suggested commissioners drawn from civic society should be appointed to head up the government departments.

The Assembly would also continue to operate.

Mr Durkan insisted the proposals gave Northern Ireland a chance to end the suspension of devolution and get the Agreement working.

“They allow us to include the social partners in government and develop the North-South agenda,” he told the briefing at Parliament Buildings hosted by Lagan Valley MLA Patricia Lewsley.

“Above all, they mean that political progress can no longer be held up by DUP hard-liners and paramilitary hardmen.”