This paper looks ahead to the Northern Ireland Executive’s forthcoming multi-year budget and highlights some important areas for consideration.

We draw out key challenges for the Executive as it sets and manages budgets, and suggest some ways in which current approaches to budgets need to change. The paper offers some headline messages for budget setting in anticipation of the publication of a draft multi-year Budget for Northern Ireland Departments in the next few weeks.

Analysis of funding provided to the Executive by the UK Government shows allocations have consistently stayed at or above the level of relative need suggested by the NI Fiscal Council. The failure to deliver adequate services with this ‘fair’ level of overall funding shows that services are not working as they should be. Services must transform, to avoid becoming increasingly unsustainable and risking collapse.