AN unprecedented nurses’ strike in 2019 finally forced Sinn Féin and the DUP to end a three-year collapse of devolution.

Nurses are balloting again for strike action over Stormont’s failure to agree a budget and deliver a promised pay rise.

Once again, this should concentrate political minds, but a resolution will be harder to find than in 2019 unless someone finds a lot more money.

The Executive has overspent by £1.6 billion this year, a figure that will continue rising in future years unless it can get its financial ill-discipline under control.

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The Secretary of State has offered £500 million a year for the next three years, while insisting this cannot be increased or spent up front. Even it if was all spent this year, next year the Executive would be back to square one.

So there is a £1.1 billion gap. Closing half of it with cuts and tax rises is just about imaginable. Closing all of it is politically impossible.

DUP Education Minister Paul Givan has been the most determined budget hold-out, and no wonder. Health consumes half of spending and education a fifth, with all other items minor by comparison.

Health is never cut, so when the axe has to fall swiftly, education bears the brunt.

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IN theory, it should soon be possible to chop an enormous sum off the £3.6 billion education budget, because Northern Ireland is running out of children.

The population is projected to decline indefinitely from 2033, or from 2031 excluding immigration.

Siobhan Casey, the Commissioner for Older People, published a report this week warning that population decline means rapid population ageing and there is no sign Stormont is preparing for........

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