“TREASURY reserve” sounds like a particularly dry sherry. In fact it is the emergency fund for UK government departments, to be used as a final resort in “genuinely unforeseen, unaffordable and unavoidable pressures”.

Money must be repaid, although without interest, so it is an advance rather than a loan.

Devolved administrations can also request an advance. Stormont has been granted £400 million to be repaid over three years, despite the £400m shortfall in its draft budget being long foreseen and entirely avoidable.

The Executive has countless options to close the gap through spending cuts and revenue-raising. It just refuses to take them.

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Sinn Féin finance minister John O’Dowd will use the money to smooth out large overspends in health and education.

Ministers in those departments would otherwise have had their overspends this year subtracted from their budgets the year after.

This is a clever move but by far its best aspect is that the Treasury is demanding Stormont opens its books for a thorough review of how it manages public money.

Unless there is serious reform during the respite O’Dowd has bought, he is only kicking the bottle down the road.

Precedent is not encouraging: this is hardly the first time London has given Stormont extra help in return for promises to do better.

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The PSNI has issued 27 pages of service instructions to officers on how to deal with paramilitary displays, including flags.

A loophole will also be closed in the Terrorism Act so items can no longer be defended as ‘historical’ – 1912 UVF flags would be the obvious example.

Deputy chief constable Bobby Singleton said “not making a decision, doing nothing or failing to act is not an option”.

But he added that people should not expect officers to run around taking down flags. That is “possible, but not likely”, he told The Irish News.

© The Irish News