To ask the Minister of Education to outline the options available to her to avoid budget deficits in her Department in the absence of an agreed Executive budget.

My Department is very restricted in its ability to reprioritise or reduce spend due to the vast majority of its budget being required to address statutory and demand-led obligations. About 80% of the total Education budget is subsumed by staff costs.

While work is ongoing to identify programmes of spend that could be scaled back or stopped, this will be extremely limited; and obviously any reduction in spend would invariably require cuts to essential frontline services that support the most vulnerable within our society, as well as risking breaching statutory obligations.

My Department started the year with inescapable or pre-committed pressures estimated at a minimum of c£409m against the indicative baseline. This figure has now risen to c£550m. Therefore, without confirmed in-year budget cover well in excess of the indicative baseline, the Department is heading towards a significant overspend up to this amount.

Even if the Draft Budget proposals are agreed to (which would give DE an additional c£161m above the indicative baseline), this would still lead to a very significant Departmental overspend of up to c£390m.

Some of the most significant pressures relate to pay (c£188m) and Special Educational Needs (c£122m).