Justice Minister Naomi Long has welcomed the additional £39.3 million allocated to her department as part of the October monitoring round.
The monitoring round was announced last week by Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald.
“My department has been proactive in working to reduce expenditure and to live within budget, including making tough decisions on vacancy management. Coupled with some easements arising from demand in our prisons being slightly less than anticipated, the department has been able to reprioritise a further £7.4m to help address pressures elsewhere,” Naomi Long said.
“There are many areas of justice that are experiencing unprecedented pressures, and I have had to make decisions to direct additional funding to where I believe it will make the most impact at this time. This includes an additional allocation of £36.7m to the PSNI. This further funding meets in full the pressures identified by the PSNI to sustain and stabilise policing in this financial year.”
PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher welcomed the Minister’s announcement on Monday.
“I warmly welcome the Justice Minister’s announcement which means the Police Service’s full funding gap will be met. I am very grateful to the Justice Minister for her decision to prioritise support for policing,” he said.
“This is great news for the Police Service – it provides financial certainty this year and will allow us to stabilise and maintain Service levels to the public. However, we need to see the security of sufficient, sustainable funding continued into next year as we enter a much needed period of recovery for the PSNI.”
“We will continue to work with the Department of Justice to develop a business case to recover officer and staff numbers to 7,000 and 2,572 respectively over the next three years. I am particularly pleased that this announcement will enable progress to be made on this year’s pay award for officers.”
The Minister also announced an allocation of £5.2 million to Legal Aid, which she hopes will “enable the processing of more legal aid payments and reduced payment times.”
