JOHN O’Dowd, the Sinn Féin finance minister, had expressed complete confidence the executive would agree a three-year budget by Christmas. Instead, he is in a public stand-off with the DUP.

The unionist party says it cannot back his proposals because DUP ministers would face real-terms cuts. It has challenged O’Dowd to eliminate “wasteful and unnecessary spending”, remarks echoed by Alliance and the UUP.

O’Dowd has published a draft and put it out to public consultation, challenging the DUP and everyone else to identify what spending should be cut.

This is a potentially useful, even essential, debate.

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The DUP once presented itself as more financially responsible than Sinn Féin. Since falling to second place, it is trying to outdo republicans in economic populism, demanding more money while ruling out revenue-raising. Identifying cuts could force both parties to confront reality.

But if there is any hope of that, there is next to no hope of it being sorted out by April 1, the start of the next financial year.

The eight-week consultation leaves just three weeks to finalise a budget. That is likely to mean another emergency one-year budget to cover the final year of the executive’s mandate – the 12th one-year budget in succession.

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Meaningful cuts cannot be achieved without reducing the public sector wage bill, typically 80% of public sector costs.

Cutting wages appears impossible – pay parity with Britain has become a political shibboleth.

Reducing headcount is another matter. Northern Ireland has unusually high levels of public sector employment: 26% of everyone in work, compared to 18% in Britain.

Only a fraction of this gap can be explained by our lower levels of privatisation, in water and public transport for example.

We do not have significantly more front-line public sector workers than Britain, so our excess is concentrated in........

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