NI Conservatives’ chairman, Irwin Armstrong, has described Martin McGuinness’s claim that the government at Westminster is ‘undermining’ the Northern Ireland executive as ‘preposterous and ironic’. “By now everyone in Northern Ireland is accustomed to the executive attempting to pass the buck for its incompetence, but even by those standards McGuinness’s comments are richly ironic”, Irwin pointed out. “This is a man whose movement brought our economy to its knees and he has the audacity to accuse the government of doing too little to help a society coming out of conflict.” “The two recent secretaries of state, Owen Paterson and Theresa Villiers, managed repeatedly to protect the Northern Ireland block grant from cuts taking place elsewhere in government. Indeed, since the spending review the executive has had £900 million extra at its disposal, including £500 million to spend on capital projects. Meanwhile Stormont ministers have tied up £330 million, which could be starting to provide jobs right now, on the stalled A5 road project alone.” “The first ministers in this executive have a brass neck and they will always try to blame everyone else rather than take responsibility for their own parties’ failure to deliver for Northern Ireland. In contrast the government at Westminster has lifted 66,000 people here out of tax, brought the G8 summit to Northern Ireland and provided cash for capital projects which the executive has failed to spend. If Martin McGuiness were honest he would look a lot closer to home for reasons this executive is failing.”