RURAL POVERTY, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND DAERA

The budget fails to address the issue of rural poverty where people face low incomes, high unemployment, depopulation and outward migration of young people, high dependence on agriculture and deteriorating infrastructure and service provision. The budget singularity fails to deal with important issues facing rural communities. Small farmers are being squeezed out of existence by the multinationals.

The complexity of the dynamics associated with climate change demands the continuation of scientific studies examining and revealing all the environmental factors that are linked to the capitalist mode of production and its huge impact on ecosystems. The destruction of the environment is a direct consequence of the capitalist system that operates based on profit.

The draft budget's approach to environmental protection and climate change can be characterised as underfunding, short-termism, and a fundamental mismatch between ambition and resources. It states that it will establish an “Office of the NI Climate Commissioner”, without proposing the establishment of an independent environmental protection agency (EPA). In terms of funding allocated towards the Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs (DAERA), which is the department charged with leading the Executive’s climate change agenda, it only receives a modest increase in its baseline over the period.

Over the three-year resource budget period, DAERA consistently receives less than 4% of the total day-to day spending allocated to departments. While the amount increases slightly each year (e.g., from £674m to £692m), its share of the overall allocation in funding remains static or declines slightly. When compared to departments like Health (which consumes approximately 50% of the resource budget) or Education (approximately 19%), DAERA's allocation appears disproportionately small given its expanded remit to lead on climate change, manage environmental crises like Lough Neagh algal bloom, and support the agricultural sector through a so-called “green transition”. The specific allocation for the Lough Neagh Action Plan is almost tokenistic, standing at £5 million per annum, which fails to reflect the scale of this environmental and economic emergency, and long-term remediation needed. Furthermore, while the Department for Infrastructure receives a large capital budget, the draft budget does not detail a commensurate increase in funding for active travel, public transport subsidies, or other measures needed to deliver the “Cleaner and Greener Transport” pillar of its strategy.

Overall, the funding commitments appear more as an aspirational goal rather than a real transformative requirement that is desperately needed in order to meet net-zero targets, adapt to climate change, and remediation of Lough Neagh algal bloom. The Workers Party explicitly rejects attempts to exonerate capitalism from the destruction of the environment and which seeks to blame the people in general and not the real culprit, i.e. the capitalist system that the Executive parties all support.

Our Party opposes the various devices and mechanisms, including so-called green transition deals that are hostile to workers and working people through the fraudulent strategies formulated by the EU, governments and the bourgeois and social democratic parties, for example, in relation to the European Green Deal, which aims at transferring funds, derived from the heavy taxation of working people, to private companies through mechanisms such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility. These strategies are designed for the sake of the monopolies and their pursuit of profits.

The liberalisation of energy, and emissions trading have led to skyrocketing commodity and fuel prices and an increase in energy poverty that plagues the peoples of Europe while the energy groups increase their wealth. For example, energy efficiency retrofit subsidies and the installation of wind turbines have been used to profit commercial interests in areas where great environmental damage is being

caused.