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Things are never straightforward with Northern Ireland's finances.

Last week, the Treasury agreed to provide the executive with £400 million of additional funding

to protect public services in the form of a three-year loan.

So it's cash up front, but it's on Stormont's credit card,

and it has to be paid back.

That means even more pressure on departmental spending in the years ahead.

Next year's regional rates been set at 5%.

And of course, after a hullabaloo a couple of weeks back,

the finance minister John O'Dowd announced a pause in the process,

which would have seen large rates increases for many operators in the hospitality sector.

No wonder some of our political leaders are talking about the need for departments to get serious about tackling inefficiencies.

I'm Mark Carruthers. Welcome to our red lines rummage under Stormant's financial bonnet with three expert friends of the podcast. Our business and economics editor John Campbell, Professor Jody Carson from Ulster University Strategic Policy Unit and Andrew Webb, chief economist at Grant Thornton, Ireland. Welcome to all of you. John, let's just start with that extra £400 million from the

Treasury. On the face of it, it sounds like good news, but is it? No, it's symptomatic of a budget

crisis at Stormont, which is now into its fourth year and actually has the potential in the coming

financial year to get even worse. Because of course the theory going back just a little bit was that this wasn't meant to be the difficult year.

It was meant to get a bit more.

I think next year was the hard year.

Next year is the hard year, which I think makes it all the more worrying that they required effectively this be allowed to reserve claim as it's known this year.

Because what happens next year

is some of the money which came through the restoration package that that has effectively come to an end

the bulk of that has come to an end there's still some bits off it but most of it was spent

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