We’re not even through the month of January and already the wheels could come off yet another cross-party, last-minute deal to keep the Northern Ireland Assembly open. As the First and Deputy First Minister begin to implement aspects of the deal, I ask: what exactly is in the Stormont House Agreement? Let’s begin with a look into the financial aspects.

After twelve weeks of negotiations; interventions from London, Dublin and Washington; and countless press conferences on Prince of Wales Avenue – our political leaders came forward two days before Christmas with the Stormont House Agreement. A fourteen page briefing on a supposedly agreed way forward for the devolved institutions. In contrast with the collapse of the 2013 Haass/O’Sullivan talks, the Stormont House Agreement was hailed as a festive miracle that could provide some hope for devolution here.

The hope is that we would have an arrangement that would not only deal with the budgetary crisis facing the Executive, caused by a failure to tackle welfare reform, but also produce movement on the legacy issues which have caused logjam not just in the Assembly but also on local Councils, particularly in Belfast, where the issues around flags and parading have infected much of the decision-making process.

But now we’re well into the January blues and the security of the deal is at risk. Having reached a broad agreement on the proposed settlement, the parties have been afforded some time to assess its terms and either assent to or reject them. Sinn Féin were the first to endorse the agreement. It seems the DUP have too, with Peter Robinson commenting in the Assembly last week that the election of a republican as the new Speaker was honouring part of an understanding that Sinn Féin would endorse the welfare reform package mentioned in the deal.

Robinson’s statement in the Assembly in support of the agreement is perhaps difficult to understand when put into context with his reluctance to co-operate on the issue of parading, unless the Secretary of State agreed to appoint a panel to resolve the issues surrounding the contentious North Belfast parades. This reluctance is surprising considering the breadth of parading powers that are expected to come to the Assembly if the agreement holds, but then again there is an election on the horizon and it suits the First Minister to posture on an issue in such a tightly contested seat as North Belfast.

Mike Nesbitt’s UUP have refused to endorse it, offering only to note its contents. Similarly, having sat in the negotiations and worked on the deal over the twelve weeks, the SDLP has also chosen not to endorse the Agreement, whilst Alliance have cautiously endorsed it.

So, what exactly is on offer in the Agreement that has produced such a lukewarm reaction, even from those involved in negotiating it?

The first section deals with the budgetary crisis that faces the Executive and is, perhaps deliberately, vague in detail; offering little in the way of figures or estimates. It goes to great lengths, however, to emphasise the concept of efficiency which has become Tory-speak for the kind of public sector cuts which have resulted in slashed services in the rest of the UK. It is only when you examine the additional documentation that the Northern Ireland Office has published that we get an idea of what the financial side of the agreement contains.

We’re told that the Treasury has produced a package of additional measures worth close to £2bn to “help the Executive deliver across its priorities.” What we find in the additional material is that up to £650m of this package will come from new and additional funding.

Around £900m of the £2bn will be resource spending allocated from what we already receive from the Treasury in the form of funds ring-fenced for capital spending on housing, construction, materials and equipment. A further £350m will also be available in the form of Treasury loans.

The specifics of the measures will include up to £150m over 5 years to pay for new quangos on legacy issues from the troubles; £700m in Treasury loans to fund a redundancy scheme over a four year period, £500m of new capital spending on shared and integrated schools; and £350m in borrowing to cover infrastructure projects, again over four years.

Along with these borrowing and spending measures, the British Government will allow the Executive to keep any funds raised through the sale of “specific agreed assets”, with the possibility of allowing the money raised to be used for both capital and resource spending. The Treasury will also give flexibility to the Executive to pay both the current £100m loan and the £114m of welfare penalties using asset sales or capital budgets and an overall reduction in the £114m penalty if welfare reform is implemented sooner, rather than later.

So, what does this package actually mean for the Executive? Essentially, it is largely part made up of Treasury loans and allowances that will give Ministers the power to dip into capital spending in order to cover resource spending.

What difference might that make? It means that the Executive could scale back on capital projects like social housing new builds, which they already have, in order to cover the additional costs of an initial short-term easing in of welfare reform or the cost of creating an estimated 20,000 redundancies in the public sector; both of which would be incredibly short-term moves, with little or no long-term gains in cutting social housing new builds or other capital projects, delaying welfare cuts or cutting jobs.

It also opens the Executive up to further Whitehall debts in order to cover the cost of a massive scaling down of the public service and a paltry attempt at easing in welfare cuts. There has been no concise plan laid out as to how Northern Ireland might cover the cost of these additional loans apart from the remote possibility of securing additional tax revenue from jobs created through the lowering of corporation tax or the sale of state assets.

Aside from the dressing up of existing funds and additional debt as new money, a further concern has been raised about the ability to sell “specific agreed assets” and keep the funds raised or use them as payment of welfare fines. It has to be asked: where does the limit of what is saleable begin and end?

Sinn Féin in the Republic have, reportedly, spent countless hours fretting about the possibility that the new Irish Water quango could be privatised. Thanks to the Stormont House Agreement there is now the possibility that Northern Ireland Water (one of only two water companies in the UK not to have been privatised), Translink, Belfast Harbour and many other state held assets could be sold in an effort to raise funds to cover further redundancies, make up for the money reclassified from capital budgets, repay loans or cover the cost of welfare penalties.

Given how easily Sinn Féin finally capitulated on welfare reform in order to get the Speaker’s job, the question must now be posed: what will it take for Martin McGuinness to give in on the sale of assets like Northern Ireland Water?

All of these cuts, loans, sales and reallocations are all supposedly balanced out by the promise of responsibility over the corporation tax rate. For years now we have been told that having power over this rate of tax would allow the Executive to create potentially thousands of jobs by attracting international corporations to invest in Northern Ireland.

Our politicians and industry leaders believe that NI can copy the early 1990s successes of the Republic in attracting global investment by offering a minimal tax burden, despite 2015 offering a completely different market situation to the 1990s.

However, the corporation tax spin is hard to understand when you read into the conditions that the British Government have set out for its devolution.

Firstly, any final move on corporation tax is tied to the delivery of the Stormont House Agreement. That means that we have to cut first before being given a tourniquet to stem the flow. It also ties the parties into delivering on new arrangements on the past, identity and parading in the second part of the deal, which given our recent political history is not entirely likely to happen. We could be left with major cuts in public services and no new fiscal powers if the DUP and Sinn Féin fall out over parading or flags again.

Secondly, we will only be gifted the ability to lower or raise the tax rate. Whatever funds are raised will still be sent to the Treasury and, furthermore, the NIO states that “the block grant will be adjusted to reflect the corporation tax revenues foregone by the UK Government due to both direct and behavioural effects”. Whatever change the reduction might make in our economic prospects, the Treasury is going to gut the block grant for the difference. This makes the British Government’s pledge on corporation tax an empty gift box. If we get the powers devolved and lower the rate we will be gifting tax cuts to big business while also having to cut further and further into the public sector at a time when growth is still sluggish and new jobs announcements are dominated by glorified low wage call centres.

So, where does all of this leave the outlook for Northern Ireland’s economy?

In my opinion, it is not a great position to be in. Despite four years of posturing, Sinn Féin have failed to negotiate any kind of comprehensive arrangement to prevent the implementation of Tory welfare cuts, leaving the young, the elderly and the vulnerable at particular risk. They’ve also opened up the possibility of large-scale asset sales which leave Northern Ireland Water and Translink among others vulnerable.

On top of this, further Treasury loans and the uncertainty around the block grant/corporation tax equation will necessitate more public sector cuts before this process is over. Hardly the kind of left-wing agenda that Sinn Féin are keen to promote.

The DUP is happy because they share the Tories’ ideological bent to restrict the size of government and strip welfare from people they consistently look down on. However, the financial package is incredibly short-sighted; striping capital budgets and borrowing more Treasury money hardly prepares for future growth.

It also represents a consistent habit of the DUP leadership to not look past the next election – they have a deal that gives politicians power over parading, which will appeal to their base who have long been told that the Parades Commission is the demon at the heart of a campaign to oppress Unionist culture.

The UUP, SDLP and Alliance have hardly gotten anything from the financial side of the deal, which in itself says a lot about the character of the negotiations.

So, despite the bleak financial package, we’ve been told this is a good deal for Northern Ireland.
But when did any deal become a good deal?

We, the public, are being asked to believe that a financial deal which strips out our local economy, decimates the welfare system, and doesn’t deliver extra fiscal measures without further caveats, is necessary in order to keep open a regional Assembly that is rapidly losing the confidence of citizens. Stormont consistently behaves like a sixth form debating club while also pleading for further devolved powers, further eroding public interest and support.

In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement represented a serious attempt at stitching together the individual pieces of Northern Ireland to create a genuine shared future. Almost everyone, even the DUP by taking office, signed up to the process in some form. To further cement the Agreement it was put to plebiscites in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, where it was overwhelmingly endorsed.

Since 1998 we’ve seen a series of addendums and amendments by the Executive parties, fundamentally altering the nature of a structure that the people voted for 1998. Obligingly, we’ve gone to the polls at every election and re-endorsed the same Executive parties that have been part of that amending process.

Now, however, they’ve presented us with a deal that includes a financial package which should seriously worry the general public. To quote the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, this package appears to be a “pay-day loan” to be used to pay off workers, cut public services and vainly attempt to get more responsibility from the big-boys’ table in Whitehall.

It is not the great hope we were told it was before Christmas. In the clear, cold light of January we can now begin to see that the Executive has failed to secure anything positive for Northern Ireland in the financial side of the Stormont House Agreement. It is all about cuts, loans, job losses and the vague promise of corporation tax powers with more conditions than a day in Toni&Guy.

Northern Ireland stands feebly in contrast with Scotland, where Scottish Nationalist Party Administrations have worked positively to secure extra powers and protection for public services, extracting hard-won concessions from the Tories. We have failed miserably at making the special economic case for Northern Ireland to the NIO, a special case that even Margaret Thatcher accepted as the given. We’ve been offered a large chunk of our own money dressed up as a new package and we’ve gullibly accepted it.

In concluding a review of the financial aspects of the Stormont House Agreement, the questions I must ask are:

What makes this deal a convincingly positive move for Northern Ireland other than the fact that it is simply a deal between political parties that might fight with their own shadows?

Should we, the public, now accept any deal that the Executive parties reach because the likelihood of them making substantial progress on any issue is slim to none?

How much longer will the smaller political parties accept this plan for financial ruin before walking away from the Executive?