The issue is when do efficiency savings start becoming cuts?

FINANCE: Ring-fencing health spending would not necessarily be a good use of the the executive’s scarce resources. There would be no incentive to reform a sector where productivity in the north lags behind other regions

A senior figure from Northern Ireland's voluntary sector once remarked to me that the public sector here "doesn't do efficiencies, it does cuts". This was a couple of years ago...

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