The British government will not damage “core services” in Northern Ireland, but must take action to address an overall budget deficit, the new Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson said today.
Mr Paterson's appointment has led to renewed speculation that the North could suffer under the Conservative plan to cut £6 billion from public spending. This remains a key element of the Liberal Democrat-Conservative policy to address the UK’s deficit.
The British government's annual “block grant” or subvention to Northern Ireland currently stands at more than £9 billion.
Mr Paterson said in Northern Ireland, some 77.6 per cent of GDP could be dependent on public spending, a figure that was “completely unsustainable”.
Mr Paterson said it "would be irresponsible to do anything too drastic. It would be equally irresponsible to do nothing.” But he said there were “certain areas” where the government had promised to uphold spending and one of those would be health.
Mr Paterson said he was being “coldly realistic” in his view that it might take up to 25 years to turn Northern Ireland into an enterprise zone.
"We need to rebalance the economy by helping increase the size of the private sector with a whole lot of radical incentives, and steadily over that time reduce dependency on public spending," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
“This is a team game. We are all in this together and we cannot go on borrowing £300,000 per minute.”
Mr Paterson said international financiers would not put up with this situation. “If we don’t address this as a new government, someone is going to come in from outside and address it.”
Everybody would have to tighten their belts and all businesses would have to deliver products and services more efficiently. “The British state has got to be the same," he said. “We have made it quite clear that we are not going to damage core services, but we are going to have to deliver them in a more efficient manner.”
Mr Paterson, who replaces Shaun Woodward at Hillsborough, said he had been to Northern Ireland every week for almost the last three years and had come to know “all the main players”. He had also spoken to Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin last night.
He would work in government with all the elected ministers, whichever party they came from.
“I intend to represent Northern Ireland as best I can in the interest of the UK. We are a UK government, we will take decisions with the best interest of everyone.”