Northern Ireland schools 'let down' by UK government says DUP education minister

Education minister Paul Givan speaking in the Stormont Assembly

Schools in Northern Ireland have been "let down" by the UK government, Stormont's education minister has said.

Paul Givan was speaking after 10 building projects for shared and integrated schools had their funding withdrawn.

He said the £150m was reallocated in the Treasury's £3.3bn financial package for the restoration of the power-sharing executive.

The minister said he has written to the government seeking extra funding.

The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) said repurposing £150m of the Fresh Start Agreement funding had provided "additional flexibility" to the executive.

The "Repurposing £150m of The Fresh Start Agreement funding has provided additional flexibility to the Northern Ireland Executive.

Mr Givan said if the government was "serious" about shared and integrated education, it needed to "provide the funding" for the school projects.

Speaking in the assembly on Monday, he said Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and the UK government have "let them down".

The 10 school building projects affected are:

• Millennium Integrated Primary School, near Saintfield, County Down

• Forge Integrated Primary School, Belfast

• Bangor Central Integrated Primary School

• Priory Integrated College, Holywood, County Down

• Fort Hill Integrated College and Primary School, Lisburn

• Slemish Integrated College, Ballymena, County Antrim

• Hazelwood Integrated College, Newtownabbey

• Integrated College Dungannon, County Tyrone

• Drumragh Integrated College, Omagh, County Tyrone

• Brookeborough Shared Education Campus, County Fermanagh

Funding for new buildings was part of a multi-million pound financial pledge following the Fresh Start Agreement in 2015.

Mr Givan said: "£150m of funding previously earmarked for Fresh Start projects has been placed in the UK government's financial settlement for the executive. In addition, construction costs for the Fresh Start projects have risen considerably in recent years."

He said the remaining Fresh Start funding was therefore only enough to cover nine other projects "currently in construction contract".

Mr Givan, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said the projects not yet in contract would "continue to advance" with design and planning.

"That however will be subject to the necessary capital becoming available when they get to the point of a state of readiness for construction," he said.

"It then will be for the Department of Education, but also the wider executive, to ensure that the necessary capital is available for these schools and all of the other schools to be taken forward."

The UK government offered a £3.3bn financial package for Stormont's new power-sharing executive, which was restored earlier this month after a two-year hiatus.

The NIO said this funding included a "repurposing" of more than £700m of "existing and new UK government funds".

A spokeswoman said the £3.3bn had been provided to "stabilise its finances and protect public services" and increased the spending power of the executive.

"Repurposing £150m of The Fresh Start Agreement funding has provided additional flexibility to the Northern Ireland Executive to decide how it uses the non-ring fenced funding and new UK Government funding streams," she added.

School buildings not fit for purpose - principal

Barry Corrigan, principal of Millennium Integrated Primary near Saintfield in County Down, said there was widespread disappointment over the funding withdrawal.

"The rug was taken out from under us," he told BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra programme.

Neville Watson, principal of Forge Integrated Primary School, said that the building project at his school was "nearly eight years in the making".

He said a "huge amount of effort" had already gone into the project.

Mr Watson added that parts of his school estate includes mobile and temporary accommodation "that's really not going to be fit for purpose for much longer or fit for purpose now".

"If you think that you're going to have new accommodation, you're not going to invest in maintaining infrastructure to the same extent that you would if you knew that you were going to be living with what you have for the long term," he said.

Paul Caskey from the Integrated Education Fund described the removal of funding as "devastating" but said they remained hopeful.

"I would be hopeful that when [the treasury] see the impact that this is going to have that they can see sense and restore this money into the pot."

"Hopefully we can get better news as quickly as possible," he said.