The Stormont Executive must agree a new provisional budget within two weeks or it will be failing in its duty, the finance minister warned the Assembly today.
Delays in producing a spending plan to accommodate the £4 billion-plus cuts imposed on Northern Ireland by the Treasury will plunge people into uncertainty ahead of the next financial year, Sammy Wilson said.
The minister urged his colleagues to work together during a specially convened assembly where a degree of consensus did emerge among the main parties on the way forward in the wake of last week's spending review announcement by British chancellor George Osborne.
A joint Sinn Fein/SDLP motion voicing concern about the reductions was passed unanimously after all parties accepted DUP and Ulster Unionist amendments calling for a collective approach and stressing the need to agree a budget.
"We do have a grave responsibility," said Mr Wilson.
"The one thing I have found as I have gone around speaking to people who work in the social sector, the voluntary sector, speaking to businessmen, speaking to the heads of (health) trusts, speaking to (school) boards of governors etc is this — they want to know what is going to happen to their budget next year.
"That is why we need to have a budget in place and debated and through this Assembly by January at the latest of this (financial) year. That means that the Executive have to agree a budget within the next couple of weeks, get it through the statutory process of consultation and then get it here on the floor of the Assembly for debate and for decision.
"If we don't do that, we will be failing in our duty."
The £4 billion cut to Northern Ireland's block grant will come on top of the direct impact of the coalition's bid to trim the overall UK-wide welfare budget and raise certain taxes — moves that could see another £1 billion taken out of the region's economy.
But the block grant is the only element the devolved administration has responsibility over.
The outworking of the spending review have prompted fears of 50,000 public and private sector job losses in Northern Ireland.
According to Mr Wilson, the region's resource budget (for public services wages and other recurrent costs) will be cut by around 8 per cent over the next four years and the capital budget (for infrastructure projects such as roads and schools) slashed by 40 per cent.
The hit to the capital spend had provoked particular anger at Stormont, with DUP First Minister Peter Robinson and Sinn Fein deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness accusing the coalition of breaking pledges to honour a 12-year £18 billion infrastructure investment programme agreed by the last Labour government during the peace process.
But secretary of state Owen Paterson has insisted Northern Ireland has done well out of the review compared to other UK government departments.
PA