Money pledged to the north as part of the DUP's confidence and supply deal with the Tories is not conditional on a functioning Stormont executive, Conservative Party headquarters has said.
Secretary of State James Brokenshire has been criticised for sidestepping questions about whether the £1 billion earmarked for Northern Ireland will still be available if the current bid to restore devolution fails.
The latest round of negotiations petered out with no agreement earlier this month. Talks involving Stormont's five parties and the two governments are expected to reconvene in September.
Following Mr Brokenshire's reallocation of public funds on Wednesday, the Tory secretary of state was pressed on whether the extra funds secured as part of the DUP-Tory deal depended on the executive being restored.
He told the BBC he would not "hypothesise or speculate" on what might happen if the talks failed.
DUP MP Sammy Wilson criticised Mr Brokenshire's lack of clarity and accused the secretary of state of not being able to "give a straight answer".
The East Antrim MP claimed the £1 billion extra funding was available to Northern Ireland as long as the DUP supported Theresa May's government at Westminster.
He said the Tory MP was "pussyfooting around".
But while Mr Brokenshire was non-committal on the issue, Tory HQ was less ambiguous, stating that measures were already in place to deliver the funds if the executive was restored
A statement from the Conservatives said the party was committed to restoring the executive and that it wanted the additional funding delivered through the devolved institutions.
"However, if despite our collective efforts it proves impossible to re-establish the executive, the Conservative Party, in signing the agreement, has recognised the case for higher funding for Northern Ireland and the agreement provides a mechanism in the form of the consultative committee by which both parties can agree the funding Northern Ireland needs," the statement said
When The Irish News reported last month that a committee of DUP and Tory MPs would decide how the money would be spent, aides to Mr Brokenshire rubbished the story. Notably, the same aides issued the Conservative Party statement confirming that the committee would step-in in the absence of an executive.
Sinn Féin last night said it was "no surprise" that the DUP and Tories would continue to administer austerity if there was no devolution.
"At the time of their deal to keep Theresa May in power, both the Tories and the DUP committed to fully adhere fully to the Good Friday Agreement and its successors," a spokesman said.
"They now need to deliver on this to enable the restoration of the political institutions."
