Neil Gibson will appear before the assembly’s finance commitee on Wednesday
By Brendan Hughes
BBC News NI political reporter
The most senior civil servant in Stormont’s Department of Finance is to appear before a Northern Ireland Assembly scrutiny committee.
It comes amid a dispute between the UK government and the Executive over the terms of a £3.3bn financial package for restoring devolution.
The government has asked local ministers to raise a minimum of £113m.
But Stormont parties want more funding and say they did not commit to revenue-raising.
Neil Gibson, permanent secretary of the Department of Finance, is to appear at the assembly’s finance committee on Wednesday.
He is set to brief assembly members alongside other senior officials from the Stormont department.
On Tuesday, the finance minister wrote to the Treasury saying she had “serious concerns” with its letter detailing the £3.3bn financial package.
Caoimhe Archibald said the current offer does not provide a “sustainable solution” to public sector pay demands.
She said the requirement to raise £113m of additional funds within 12 months would “only serve to cause more harm to hard-pressed families, households and businesses”.
‘Built-in commitments’
The minister added it was “not acceptable” to make a £559m debt write-off from previous years conditional on the implementation of a sustainability plan.
It is understood the government wants this plan to be published by May.
Earlier, the government wrote to the Dr Archibald setting out the details of the £3.3bn package, which was agreed in December for a restored power-sharing executive.
The £113m is the figure the government previously estimated could be raised by increasing the regional rate in Northern Ireland by 15%.
Rates are a property tax which help fund public services in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) said the funding offer contained “built-in commitments”.
It said these included “publishing and implementing a plan to deliver sustainable finances – including delivery of a balanced budget for 2024-25 by raising a minimum of £113m through locally generated income”.
Michelle O’Neill said she had not signed up to revenue raising as part of the financial package
The DUP deputy leader Gavin Robinson told the Nolan Show there has been “a failure of government to baseline what they now recognise as what Northern Ireland needs from the start of this financial period”.
“They government is saying they will write off debt that should never have arisen because they should never have funded us below need,” he said.
“Now they say we’ll not give you that money. We’re going to claw back what it is we have overspent and charge you for it.
“It doesn’t make sense. It wasn’t right in December, when we said it wasn’t right, and it’s not right today.”
Alliance assembly member Eoin Tennyson, who sits on the Finance Committee, said the government could have been more specific about clarifying its expectations.
“The government was clear that there would have to be a budget sustainability plan as a condition of that debt forgiveness and as part of that they expected to see some revenue raising,” he told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster.
“However, they were not explicit about the nature, timing or scale of that revenue raising and that is where I think the government is taking an overly punitive approach where they are expecting an executive that is already under huge pressure to raise revenue this financial year.
“That would place a huge burden on households and businesses who are really struggling with the cost of living.”
The Department of Finance has just completed a consultation on revenue raising through rates.
Rates are the property taxes paid by households and businesses in Northern Ireland.
The measures being consulted on included ending rates discounts for manufacturing businesses and increasing the rates paid on the most valuable houses.
In theory these could bring in as much as an extra £128m a year.
However, none of these measures could be in place for the start of the new financial year in April.
If, as the UK government wants, Stormont is to raise more money from the start of the new financial year, the only realistic option is an across the board increase in rates.
In recent days ministers have ruled out any dramatic increase, however an inflation-only increase would still mean adding at least 4% to bills.
‘More questions than answers’
Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said the package tackles Stormont budget pressures and “paves the way for vital transformation of public services”.
On Monday, First Minister Michelle O’Neill said she had “not signed up to revenue-raising” as part of the £3.3bn funding package.
The Sinn Féin deputy leader said no party had agreed to measures like water charges.
Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said it was unsustainable to ask people to pay more for “poor public services”.
Matthew O’Toole, chair of the assembly’s finance committee, said there were “still more questions than answers over what exactly was agreed in the financial package”.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) assembly member, leader of the opposition at Stormont, said: “All this should have been clarified before now.
“This isn’t just a political ‘he said-she said’ – this is about delivering basic public services for the people of Northern Ireland and what they’ll have to pay for them.”
