Swine Flu Finance In Focus

A high-level inter-governmental meeting has been held over the swine flu outbreak.

Stormont Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson (pictured here) attended a trilateral meeting with his counterparts from the Scottish and Welsh Governments to discuss key public expenditure issues.

Top of the agenda at the meeting, which was held with John Swinney of the Scottish administration and Andrew Davies his opposite number from Wales, was the approach to handling the swine flu outbreak being taken by each administration.

Speaking after the discussions, Mr Wilson said: "The meeting provided me with a useful opportunity to engage with the other devolved administrations on the issue of swine flu.

"I was particularly interested to hear about the work being undertaken in Scotland and Wales to ensure their respective health services can deal with the pandemic in the most effective manner possible.

"I am keen that we learn from best practice across the UK to enable the Executive to deliver a first-class response to this challenge," he said.

"With the increasingly constrained financial environment in which we are operating, I want to ensure not only that we provide the best service possible, but that we do so in a cost-effective way," the Minister continued.

"In this context, we also discussed the funding arrangements in respect of the UK response to swine flu and agreed that additional financial support should be provided to each of the administrations.

"We agreed to continue to press on this issue, to ensure local programmes and projects do not suffer in the fight against what is a national challenge," he said.

"In the current economic environment - and with the prospect of significant constraints in public spending in the coming years - it is important that the Executive continues to work with other parts of the UK in areas of common interest.

"It is clear from my discussions with the Scottish and Welsh Finance Ministers that we face a number of the same pressures and it has been valuable to learn from each others experience to date," he concluded.

Late last month, an NI teachers union raised concerns that not enough resources have been made available to schools to prevent the spread of swine flu.

INTO said some principals were concerned that they would have to take money from the school budget to buy tissues and alcohol wipes.

"We are concerned that there has not been central resourcing of a problem which impacts on the entire community," said a spokesman.

See: INTO Has Doubts Over Swine Flu

(BMcC/KMcA)