​Stormont's infrastructure minister sends forensic accountants into NI Water - but concerns are raised about implications of the move

​Liz Kimmins made the shock announcement to the assembly yesterday saying that despite a current allocation of just over £152million, the board of NI Water “has indicated in writing that it is minded to instruct NI Water to overspend unless additional budget is available”.

The overspend is expected to be in the region of £3m. The Sinn Fein minister said that she fully understood the “budgetary management decisions that NI Water has taken this year that have led to the board of NI Water proposing this unprecedented and disappointing course of action”.

But she said engaging forensic accountants was “a necessary step” which would help her department “work in partnership together with NI Water and enable better planning going forward in these times of constrained budgets”.

However, the Ulster Unionist finance spokesperson Steve Aiken has raised concerns that the move “implies concerns about misappropriation not overspend”.

He told the News Letter: “The legal set up of NI Water means that the minister of infrastructure and her department are legally required, by the regulator, to support clean water and sewage.

“Reading the minutes of the NI Water board, you can read the concerns that they are showing in making sure that they believe that they don’t have the resources to meet their health and safety obligations –- obligations that the minister is legally required to meet.

“Bearing in mind the disclaiming of Department of Economy accounts, with limited or no action, one has to wonder just why another SF minister is intent of bringing in forensic accounts at public expense.”

Asked about the move – and Mr Aiken’s comments – an NI Water spokesperson said it “will be working with DfI in line with minister’s instructions”.

Ulster University Senior Economist Esmond Birnie says the situation regarding NI Water and its Board “is in some respects extraordinary”.

He told the News Letter: “If it is the case that the Board of the public body have decided they ‘must’ over-spend then that is very unusual . Boards of public bodies have to take very seriously their duty to keep within budgets . If NI Water is doing otherwise that suggests to me that they have concluded that in this case failure to spend will place them in breach of some legal obligation, for example re environmental standards.

“Whatever the merits of use of forensic accountants some of us have felt that for decades now the fundamental problem… remains the absence of domestic water charges. At the moment we are seeing a lot of attempts to square the circle which will almost certainly prove futile. Similarly recent proposals for ‘developer contributions’ will not resolve the basic funding problem.

The Alliance Party said NI Water will never escape damaging financial pressures “so long as the infrastructure minister clings to its existing failed funding model”.

The party’s infrastructure spokesperson Andrew McMurray said the news “is concerning and it is important due process is carried out to get to the bottom of the situation”.

The South Down MLA said: “That does not distract from the wider reality that NI Water will never be in a sustainable financial position so long as the minister clings to a failed funding model that leaves our water infrastructure system without the investment it needs”.

SDLP Opposition Infrastructure Spokesperson Mark H Durkan said that NI Water’s budget overspend has underlined the need for fundamental change in the way the organisation is run and funded.

“Given the huge challenges facing NI Water it comes as little surprise that the organisation has overspent its budget this year as it aims to uphold its responsibilities. This situation also points to the failure of Ministers to acknowledge just how dire the situation facing NI Water is, with catastrophic consequences for everything from our environment to building housing”, the Foyle MLA said.

The Department of Infrastructure said NI Water has received a total of £152m resource this financial year. They said this was an opening resource budget allocation of £137m, representing almost one-quarter of the total resource allocation available to the department. Officials said an additional £11.5million resource was secured for NI Water in-year – and in addition, £2.9million was also provided to deal with the aftermath of Storm Eowyn.