NI Conservatives’ finance spokesman, Harry Cullen, has described £16.5 million spent by the Department of Education on the stalled Education and Skills Authority, as “an outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money, at a time when the minister is proposing to cut the budgets of 81 per cent of primary schools, working at the front line of education”.
“The amount of cash which has been squandered, without getting the ESA up and running, is another indictment of the culture of waste at Stormont”, Harry observed. “Initially, the whole concept behind this body was supposed to be governing education in a more efficient way and saving the taxpayer money. Yet, in the hands of Sinn Féin ministers it has become an excuse to attack some of our best schools and, consequently, the project is failing. Meanwhile, John O’Dowd is proposing funding reforms which will cut the budgets of 81% of primary schools.”
“As it stands, without a major re-think, the ESA represents yet another £16.5 million squandered by our failing executive, to add to recent waste like an £18 million overspent by the Housing Executive, £140 million blown on bad procurement, £17 million on unnecessary office space and countless other examples. Stormont ministers are effectively throwing hundreds of millions of pounds down the drain, which could be used for the benefit of the people of Northern Ireland, to provide services, exactly like the front-line education in Northern Ireland’s primaries, which John O’Dowd wants to cut.”
“It’s deeply ironic, but absolutely typical of this executive, that a body which was supposed to save money has become yet another excuse to waste it.”