Stormont budget: What does it mean for childcare, waiting lists and water?

The budget allocation for childcare is about 6% of the £400m that the education minister previously said would be needed.

This is just one area in which funding allocated by the Executive falls short of what ministers have called for.

So what will Thursday's budget mean for three key areas: waiting lists, childcare and the water network?

All of them will require significant investment this year and in years to come.

What has been agreed so far is the overall allocation that each department will receive.

How that money is spent is up to the respective ministers to prioritise.

The Executive has decided to set aside £25m for childcare; that's about 6% of the £400m that the education minister previously said would be needed to fully fund a childcare and early learning strategy.

Aoife Hamilton of Employers for Childcare said: "Failure to invest in childcare means we will be letting down businesses and our economy when parents are unable to work and the government won't be able to deliver on any of its priorities, whether that's infrastructure, education or bringing down our waiting lists.

"We need to make sure it has the workforce to do so and that means childcare."

She said that there are two main areas that need to be resourced - a long-term childcare strategy and immediate support for both parents and childcare providers who, she said, are "at breaking point".

She said: "We know that ministers are going to have very difficult decisions to make and there are competing priorities for this stretched budget, but childcare is the right place to start because if we get that right, we will make significant savings right across our economy enabling parents to get into and stay in work."

Speaking to BBC News NI, Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald said she recognised that childcare costs had increased "exponentially" and stressed that despite the "very challenging budget" the executive is working with, childcare is "one of its priority issues".

"I think it is important that we take some time to develop those proposals and then to allocate funding accordingly," she said.

"It's something that will require more investment than the £25m that has been set aside, but for us that's a start and it shows that childcare is a priority."

There has been £34m set aside to tackle waiting lists, which was provided as part of the UK Government package for the restoration of devolution.

Royal College of Surgeons NI director Niall McGonigle said the current situation is no longer sustainable.

He said: "Looking at our waiting lists, we have calculated that we probably need about £200m a year, for the next five years so it's really quite a big step up in the budget.

"I think it's very clear that the health service has been underfunded for years and that's why we are seeing such backlogs of waiting lists of 115,000 people waiting for some sort of inpatient care.

"We know that a lot of people's lives have been put on hold whilst they are on a waiting list to have surgery performed. It is very important to realise that a lot of these problems have been built up over periods of times so they need to be addressed."

Ryan Williams, of domiciliary care provider Connected Health, said there had been an anticipation of a significant "windfall and investment" to the social care sector through the Stormont budget, so Thursday's announcement was "unnerving".

"The expectation in terms of everybody in Northern Ireland was there was a significant dividend coming to help the under investment over the last number of years, particularly in things like home care," he said.

"Without really good home care, and well-structured home care, the rest of the sector really suffers, like hospital discharges, like more people going into hospital, like more people having to go to nursing and residential beds etc.

"The interdependence of the health care and social care system is really the critical issue here and that's where the investment was required."

Last month, an NI Audit Office report found that NI Water funding was £93m lower than what it deemed necessary in 2023-2024 and said it expected to face another shortfall this year.

The Construction Employers Federation has said that the money available for capital projects is "never going to be enough" after years of underinvestment.

Chief executive Mark Spence said that is the same amount we were getting 17 years ago and he says the main priority needs to be NI Water.

He said: "The utility regulator would tell us that NI Water needs £600m a year to deliver the water capacity improvements that we need to release housing.

"If we don't do that, we are holding back housing and economic development. At the moment, according to our latest survey 8,500 homes are currently being held up."

"NI Water tell us that figure could be as high as 19,000 so we are in the midst of a housing crisis," he added.