Long confident over pay award for Northern Ireland police officers

Stormont’s Justice Minister has said she is confident police officers in Northern Ireland will receive a pay award this year.

However, Naomi Long said she could not overspend on her budget, warning that such behaviour by ministers could lead to an “absolute crisis” next year.

Opposition leader Matthew O’Toole has said he fears Executive ministers will find themselves in the same position next year dealing with public sector pay pressures.

Health Minister Mike Nesbitt announced on Thursday that he has been given approval to award pay parity to healthcare workers in the region.

Ms Long said her ministerial colleague would be “spending money he currently doesn’t have” to make the awards.

The Justice Minister told the BBC she was working hard with PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher to prove that a pay deal is affordable.

She said: “I believe that with a few more weeks of work we may be in a position to do that, but we will have to wait until December monitoring, until we see what actually materialises in terms of funding and how we can close the PSNI’s funding gap to make that affordable.

“I think all of us around the Executive table are clear, we have to fund our public sector workers, that is a priority, that is why when I was setting my budget I set aside around 3% for pay when I was doing the allocations, the difficulty of course is that not all ministers did set aside budget for pay and that has left us with this yawning gap in the middle of our gap.

“It is not good practice but it is right that the workers shouldn’t suffer in terms of bad practice in how people have budgeted.

“I am confident by the end of this year we will be able to manage our budget successfully but also make the pay awards that I believe the police deserve.

“Just because the police don’t take and can’t take industrial action doesn’t mean that they should be at the end of the queue when it comes to getting their funding.”

Ms Long said the Health Minister had been told by the Executive to go ahead with his pay awards.

She said: “That means he is spending money he currently doesn’t have.

“But he is also very clear and is also very clear with the Executive that he is trying to sweat every pound out of his budget to close that gap.

“That is what we all have, not just a moral responsibility to do, because this will come off our budgets next year and will have long term consequences next year, but we also have a legal duty to do this.

“It is not an option for us simply to overspend.”

She added: “I believe we can close the gap in justice and I guess that is the difference.

“I believe it is possible, given what we have already been told, we are going to get £7 million for recruitment this year, we are also in line for another £6.7 million towards pay, that will significantly reduce the projected overspend of PSNI.”

The Justice Minister said if all ministers overspent on their budget “we will end up next year in an absolute crisis with no money to pay for any services”.

She added: “We can’t be reckless with our spending, it isn’t legal, we are bound by our budget.”

SDLP MLA and Finance Committee chairman Mr O’Toole said ministers continued to “kick the can down the road then blame others”.

He added: “They need to take responsibility, grip this problem and sort it out.

“It cannot happen again, but I fear that it will.”