RISHI Sunak not so much kicked the can down the road yesterday, but aimed it right into his Northern Ireland equivalent Conor Murphy's front garden.
Setting aside the worthy measures to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak (£30 billion has been pledged to mitigate the crisis), the fresh-faced Chancellor's Budget featured many headline-grabbing cuts and giveaways.
But much of it was a mere deferral of unpopular tax rises which haven't gone away, you know, and are likely to re-emerge once the economy is fully back on its feet in summer or autumn.
And in a Budget lauded as being unprecedented in nature in its creative solutions for business, many of his initiatives (like scrapping rates for shops, cinemas, restaurants and music venues with a rateable value under £51,000) apply to England and Wales only.
That effectively passes the baton to the Stormont finance minister and his equals in their other regional administrations, which have been allocated a modest bag of "new money" to follow his lead. Or not, as the case may be.
So it's up to Mr Murphy now, in his own budget, to set out his spending priorities (though it's a safe bet that when he's delivering his statement, he'll not utter "we got it done" ad nauseam).
Northern Ireland, Mr Sunak announced, is to receive an extra £215 million for public services (£77m of resource funding and £138m for capital projects), which Secretary of State Brandon Lewis described as a "massive further investment and an outline of the monies coming into the growth deal and city deals as well as money for broadband infrastructure improvements".
Already the loudest local lobbyists are lurking.
Retail NI head Glyn Roberts insisted the Chancellor's intended rates relief was welcome but the north's finance minister must act to ensure they are passed on in his forthcoming budget "to support local traders who are going through the same crisis as elsewhere in the UK.”
Aodhán Connolly from the NI Retail Consortium said: "While the extra £210 million coming to Northern Ireland as part of the block grant is very welcome, we need to make sure it is not just spent to plug holes in our own devolved budget."
But Neil Gibson, chief economist at EY Ireland, added: “Northern Ireland will be able to choose its own priorities as to how to spend the extra funding, and although it will fall short of the levels hoped for by many ministers, it does provide much needed additional spending capacity.”
Needless to say, the additional £215m falls way short of Conor Murphy's expectations, and he said: “We need to study the detail of the proposal before deciding how the Executive can best support small businesses here.
“With finite resources and infinite demands, myself and ministerial colleagues will take a collective approach to prioritisation, making the best possible use of the available resources.”
Now we await his Budget on March 30 . . . .
