To ask the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for her assessment of the impact that a 26 per cent cut to the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute budget will have on the agri-food sector.

On a like-for-like basis, the reduction to AFBI’s 2015/16 budget is 11.5% compared with a reduction to DARD’s overall budget of 15.1%.

My Departmental budget is being constrained by public sector budget cuts as a result of reductions to the Executive’s block grant by the Tory Government in Britain. I have therefore had to prioritise my spending plans, taking account of the full range of Departmental responsibilities and the potential effect on frontline services. These plans include much more than the budget I allocate to AFBI. However, you will note that the reduction applied to AFBI’s 2015/16 budget baseline is less than that for the Department as a whole.