Trident upgrades are ‘indefensible’ – Murphy

Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy has blasted the British Government’s spending on Trident upgrades as ‘indefensible’.

Sinn Féin MLA Conor Murphy

The Newry MLA was speaking in the Assembly where he said the cost of the system’s upgrades, now expected to top £167bn, were ‘totally unjustifiable’ at a time when the same government was introducing crippling austerity measures on people.

“The spending of that amount of money will directly affect every man, woman and child in this jurisdiction in a negative way,” he stated. “Part of the contribution to that spend is taxpayers’ money from this jurisdiction. So it is something that is of interest to the Assembly.

“Of course, the British Government are entitled to have their own defence policy and follow their own defence strategies, as supported or proposed in the British House of Commons.

“However, such spending plans have a direct impact across Britain and, indeed, here in Ireland where people will be affected by the subsequent lack of money available to Departments and the systems of public spending here.

“Any of us who had the dubious pleasure of being at Stormont House, at the regular round-table sessions, will know that we are living with the mantra of no more money available to the British Government.

“We were told that every section would have to face what were termed “eye-watering cuts”, when, clearly, there is a significant amount of money for spending on this project.

“The justification for that is a project that senior military people have been quoted as saying is strategically completely useless. That spend, if it were allocated across, for instance, work and pensions, education and transport, would be worth £5 billion to this Assembly.

Murphy added, “Surely that could be put to better use to support people, create employment opportunities and educate young people to take their place in the workforce and contribute to a growing economy.”

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Posted by Newry Times News on Dec 4 2015. Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry