Marshall in QUB role

It is understood that the former president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU), Ian Marshall is to take up full-time employment within Queen’s University Belfast, starting from next week.

The job is thought to involve an international marketing role within the Institute of Global Food Security.

Marshall was president of the UFU from April 2014 to April 2016, and has a number of other roles in the industry, including as a member of the agri-food strategy board. A former dairy farmer, he exited milk production in 2015.

Little takes Germinal NI post

Agricultural seed company Germinal has appointed David Little as general manager at its NI headquarters in Banbridge.

Little has worked at Germinal NI since 2012 and is from a beef farm near Banbridge. “I hope to steer the business further towards helping farmers maximise production from forage,” he said.

Budget cuts reduced at DAERA

Potential cuts to 2017/18 DAERA finances as part of an indicative budget announced by NI Secretary of State James Brokenshire in April have been reduced.

An updated position was outlined by Brokenshire last week, which sees a 1.1% cut to DAERA’s resource budget (mainly used to cover staff costs) in 2017/18 taking it to £194.8m, down from the potential 3.2% cut announced in April.

This comes about after an additional £4m was added to the department’s resource budget. An extra £2.5m has also been added to DAERA’s capital budget, taking it to £46.5m.

Across all nine NI government departments, DAERA still faces the largest cut under the updated budget position, with the Department for the Economy facing the second largest resource budget cut of 0.9%.

The indicative budget is necessary due to the continued absence of a functioning Executive at Stormont. Last week, the NI Secretary of State confirmed that legislation would be brought forward at Westminster for the British government to impose a budget if an executive is not restored in the autumn.

The changes announced last week are to reflect the British Chancellor’s Spring Budget, department transfers and updated forecasts. Brokenshire highlighted that it did not include additional funds secured for NI under the Tory-DUP deal. “A restored executive will need to agree how it wishes to allocate these funds,” he said.