23 September 2026

SDLP Leader of the Opposition Matthew O'Toole MLA has said cuts to thousands of student places at Belfast Metropolitan College show the human impact of the Executive's continuing failure to agree a Budget.

Belfast Met has directly linked the situation facing the college to the absence of an agreed Budget, saying it has been left operating on a contingency allocation and facing a resource shortfall of around £6.8m.

Matthew O'Toole MLA said:

"More than 2,500 places disappearing from Belfast Met is an enormous loss for our city and the people who depend on these courses. Someone hoping to improve their English, get the qualifications they missed at school, retrain for a new job or return to education as an adult will now find that door harder to open.

"The SDLP Opposition has been warning for months that failing to agree a Budget would have a serious impact on public services. Unlike the Executive's sham fights and blame-shifting, those warnings were not political theatre. We are now seeing what happens when the crisis around the Budget is allowed to drift without agreement.

"What makes this particularly galling is that the same Executive talks constantly about skills, productivity and getting more people into good jobs. Further education is central to all of those things. Ministers cannot seriously keep talking about those ambitions while colleges are being forced to cut the very courses that help deliver them because of a lack of leadership at Stormont.

"The four Executive parties need to get their act together and finally address this issue. Difficult decisions are already being made because Ministers have failed to provide certainty over funding. The longer this continues, the more people across Northern Ireland will pay the price. They asked the public for a mandate to govern. They now need to use it, make the decisions required of them and agree a Budget."