Stormant is up and running and nobody's in any doubt about the issues on the table.

One seasoned observer, our economics and business editor John Campbell, has suggested we're witnessing

no less than the wasting away of our public services, that there's fraying of the civic fabric.

So what about the difficult decisions that need to be taken?

When will the tough choices facing ministers and MLAs here be made to tackle

what appears to be a vast range of problems? And who will be marking those decision-makers'

homework and holding them to account? Red Lines is back at Parliament buildings to take the temperature

with some of the key players. The SDLP's Matthew Toole is the official leader of the opposition, and he also chairs the Finance Committee.

Jerry Carroll is the People Before Profits West Belfast, MLA, and he sits on the Finance Committee alongside Sinn Féin's Deirdre Hargey and the Alliance Party's Owen Tennyson.

The DUP's Jonathan Buckley is here.

He's on the Economy Committee.

The Ulster Unionist Party's John Stewart joins us too, and he sits on the infrastructure committee.

In fact, he's the deputy chair of the Infrastructure Committee.

And you all have very busy diaries today.

We appreciate you being here.

Welcome to Red Lines.

Matthew O'Toole, let me start with you. This was a big week for the opposition at the

Assembly and we'll come on to that in a bit more detail in a moment. But first of all, we're expecting a budget very soon,

but a programme for government still appears some way off. What do you want to see happening as far as the budget is concerned,

first of all?

I think the first and most important thing is a sense of prioritisation and how the executive is planning to deal with a crisis in public services. As we've been back for the last two

and a half months, I think we've been pretty consistently reasonable as an opposition in giving the executive and executive party's time and space to develop a plan that involves

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