Education department to get £40m in Stormont funding boost

Finance Minister Conor Murphy said that all bids submitted by departments have been met in full

The Department of Education is to get an extra £40m from the reallocation of money across Stormont departments.

The move was announced by the finance minister, Conor Murphy, as part of a £151m budgeting exercise known as a monitoring round.

A large part of the education money is for coronavirus pandemic pressures including the cost of using substitute teachers.

It also includes £18.4m for special educational needs.

Mr Murphy said the school sector had been under "significant pressure right through the autumn and through the winter".

"Access to sub teachers and people going off with Covid or isolating because of close contact with Covid has presented a real challenge in the schools, so I hope some of that [money] helps ease that," he said.

There is an additional £44m for public transport to make up for the continuing loss of passenger revenue related to to the pandemic.

There is also confirmation of £4m for a Department for Infrastructure scheme to give further support to private bus and coach operators.

Mr Murphy said that all bids submitted by departments have been met in full.

"If further bids to meet urgent priorities come forward from departments, further allocations can be made," he added.

"However, given the constrained budget position next year, the executive does want to carry over funding into the next financial year."

Mr Murphy said he would be meeting public sector unions in the coming weeks to discuss pay.

"Of course they recognise the limited resources that we are working in, they know that the budget outcome is not what we wanted and that we are trying to address issues of public pay," he said.

The executive's draft budget assumes that most civil service pay will rise by 2% a year each year over the next three years.

However, the current rate of inflation in more than 5% and is expected to increase further in coming months.

Mr Murphy did not commit to pay rises keeping up with inflation.

"Inflation is a problem beyond our control and we are going to have to try and manage that over the next three years," he said.

"We can't say what inflation will be - what we can say is that we will try and match those increases as best we can within the limited funds that we have in the time ahead."