'We can't conjure up funds... there are no money trees at Stormont'

Striking the budget deal was the "lesser of two evils", Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said.

DUP and Sinn Fein ministers brought the 2015/16 draft plan over the line yesterday following a 90-minute meeting at Stormont Castle.

All of the smaller parties refused to back it.

SDLP Environment Minister Mark H Durkan was the only member of the Executive to vote against it, while Ulster Unionist Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy and the two Alliance ministers David Ford (Justice) and Stephen Farry (Employment and Learning) abstained.

Mr Ford said: "If it had been a good deal, we would have voted for it."

Mr Kennedy described the cuts to his department as "savage", and Mr Durkan said it was a "bad budget" and claimed the Executive had been "rushed into it".

Mr Hamilton said they had "confounded our critics" by managing to agree the draft budget.

He said health, job creation, schools and policing had been prioritised.

First Minister Peter Robinson praised Finance Minister Simon Hamilton for doing a "tremendous job".

He said he was "deeply disappointed at the behaviour of some of the ministers who feel they can "play party politics with these issues", accusing them of not being prepared to take hard decisions.

"We have been faced with a very difficult set of circumstances," he said.

"It arises from the fact that our budget year on year is under pressure. We will act responsibly, we will take the decisions.

"The reality is if you compare the spending power of our budget today compared with 2009, we have £1.5bn less spending power today than we had back then."

Mr Robinson described the underlying principle behind the budget as "to do the least possible damage to front-line services and provide the best possible front-line services to the people of Northern Ireland."

The DUP leader challenged any parties or trade unions looking for more money or protesting at the cuts to lobby Whitehall themselves. "We have a fixed amount of money to spend, if you are going to tell us that you want more money for something, tell us where you are going to get it from," he said.

"We can't conjure up the funds that allow us to spend more, there are no money trees around Stormont Castle."

Mr McGuinness said it was "not a good news story", but said agreeing the budget was the "lesser of two evils".

"These are difficult decisions, no one is under any illusion about the challenges that we face," he said.

"Peter Robinson and I are on the same page that since 2009 the present British Government has, in a very ruthless fashion, cut our budget to the tune of well over a billion pounds.

"That is a very difficult situation for any administration to deal with. But that's the reality."

He added that the Assembly would have collapsed had there not been agreement.

"The reality is that if we had not agreed this budget today, effectively the power and authority of this administration would have passed essentially to Westminster," he said.

"I think you all know what would happen then - water charges would be imposed, student fees would be hiked up to the same rate as they are in England and God knows what other measures would have been taken by an administration that doesn't receive one single vote here in the north of Ireland.

"Our job is to lead, we can't do that from behind. You have to do it from the front."

Belfast Telegraph