Translink has warned it must cut services and end discounts for young people and families because Stormont keeps freezing its fares.

There have been five freezes in the past nine years, mostly justified by the pandemic and cost of living emergencies.

Fares were raised 7% after the pandemic, yet over those nine years as a whole fares have risen just 20% while inflation has totalled 40%.

It is the same story with tuition fees. They had paced inflation until 2011 but have since been allowed to fall about 10 points behind, equivalent to around £1,000 per student per year.

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Ulster University is now cutting jobs, Queen’s is wrestling with a similar deficit and there is a chronic shortage of places for local undergraduates.

Stormont is capable of inflationary discipline, just about. It has usually raised domestic rates in line with prices, it raised them a little above last year and it is planning to do the same in its latest attempt at a budget.

But its general approach is cakeism. Stormont insists the block grant must match or exceed inflation and its wish has invariably been granted: funding from London is up 30% since 2022, compared to price rises of 20%.

Stormont accepts that public sector workers must have inflationary increases – their pay is where most of its money goes.

But ministers balk at raising a handful of totemic charges and populist discounts, such as tuition fees. Although these account for a small fraction of its budget, neglecting them for years has gradually built up into a permanent financial crisis.

Nationalist ministers had been most at fault, but over the course of this decade unionist parties have given up even pretending to be any more responsible.

They all agree London should simply give them more cake. So far, in the end, London always has – but who can look at the state of our public services and call this chaotic brinkmanship a success?

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