There's been a lot of talk about how we're entering a new phase of Northern Ireland politics.

The Assembly is on hiatus once again, and the Secretary of State has set a headline budget,

though he's opted to leave it to senior civil servants to decide how to divvy up the money within government departments.

The civil servants clearly aren't happy about that, though there's not a lot they can do about it at the moment.

So as our MLAs face the prospect of having their salaries cut and permanent secretaries are confronted with a slew of near impossible financial decisions, what do the months ahead hold for politics in this place?

That's what we're discussing on this week's red Lines with our political correspondent Jane McCormack,

the columnist and commentator Newton Emerson, and the former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Sir Malcolm McKibbon.

Welcome to all of you and thanks very much for joining us on Red Lines this week.

Jane, you interviewed the newish head of the Civil Service Jane Brady yesterday in her first in-depth interview since taking up the job just over a year ago.

Which Jane do you think was the more enthusiastic about that interview taking place?

You or your very important namesake?

I don't want to do away with the idea that Jane Brady wouldn't want to speak to the media, who wouldn't.

But obviously when journalists get a chance to sit down face to face with somebody high up in government who doesn't do interviews very often, in fact she hadn't done any since taking office. Clearly, I was the more excited. Maybe

is not the right word, but I'm keen to hear from her about what she makes of what is going on right

now in a pretty unprecedented crisis. I spent the night before drafting up a full list of questions,

put pretty much every one of them to her, which she answered, but she didn't necessarily

always give me the answer that I was expecting to get her what I was looking for. I think she did

keep a lot of cards close to her chest. She didn't give very much away. And given, you know,

what we've heard on this program in the past few weeks from the likes of Sir David Sterling,

Dr. Andrew McCormick on The View on Thursday.

I did wonder would she react to any of that, but she seemed to really not want to get brought

into any of the controversy and she wanted to stick to where her focus is, which is trying to

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