Conservative Party spokesman, Mark Brotherston, has accused Sinn Féin of putting high-profile cultural and sports events “in grave doubt”, because of “intransigence and a warped sense of priorities”.
“It’s worrying that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) has pulled the plug on the Northern Ireland Tourist Board’s events fund”, Mark explained. “This is the latest cut to front-line services necessitated by Sinn Féin’s intransigence on welfare reform and its refusal to look seriously at balancing the Stormont budget. Tourism is absolutely vital to growing our economy and the events which this fund supports, like Culture Night and the Cathedral Arts Festival, are precisely the type of offering which brings visitors to Northern Ireland to spend their hard-earned cash. This comes on the back of other departments hacking back services provided by private contractors, with the result that jobs have been lost, while inefficiencies within these departments continue unchecked.”
“The cuts which have been made by the Executive so far show the short termism of ministers’ thinking and a lack of serious focus on rebalancing the economy. Sinn Féin in particular has refused to take difficult decisions on welfare reform. Currently, only about 620 families in Northern Ireland are receiving benefits in excess of the welfare cap of £26,000, introduced by the Westminster government to ensure fairness for taxpayers. Yet, in Sinn Féin’s world of warped priorities, protecting their incomes counts for far more than the livelihoods of hard-working families whose jobs will be first in line when it comes to Executive cuts. It’s time for Sinn Féin to get real and to start putting front-line services and jobs ahead of its own narrow, party political agenda.”