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The Conservative leader, David Cameron, has said state funding in Northern Ireland makes up too much of the local economy. Mr Cameron was speaking in an interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC One on Friday evening.
He agreed that he had said in some parts of the UK the "state accounts for a bigger share of the economy than it did in the communist countries of the old eastern bloc - it is clearly unsustainable".
Asked by Mr Paxman which part of the UK he was referring to, Mr Cameron said:"I think the first one I would pick out is Northern Ireland.
"I mean in Northern Ireland it is quite clear, almost every party I think accepts this - that the size of the state has got too big, we need a bigger private sector.
"There are other parts of the country including for instance the north east, that the aim has got to be to get the private sector, get the commercial sector going."
Economic policy
When Mr Paxman said, "you are going to cut spending in Northern Ireland clearly", Mr Cameron replied, "I think you are looking at this in a very strange way if I might say so".
The Tory leader added that "almost any party leader sitting in this chair" would say that over the next parliament there needed to be a "faster growing private sector" and a "rebalancing of the economy".
Danny Kennedy, deputy leader of the UUP, who are election partners with the Conservatives for the 2010 general election, said Mr Cameron's comments were an "honest assessment of the Northern Ireland economy".
In terms of economic policy, the Conservatives aim to eliminate "the bulk" of the UK's structural deficit within five years beginning in 2010 with £6bn in cuts.
They plan to have spending cuts in all areas apart from health and foreign aid and cut civil service costs by a third over five years.
Labour aim to have a "targeted" increase in public spending over the next year to "sustain the recovery", before cutting the deficit by more than 50% by 2014 and reducing the structural deficit by at least two-thirds over the next parliament.
They say they would have a 1% cap on public sector pay rises for 2011-12 and 2012-13.
The Liberal Democrats say they would identify and cut £15bn per year of lower priority spending to protect front-line services while reducing structural defecit at least as fast as Labour plans, beginning in 2011.
They say they would set a £400 pay rise cap for all public sector workers.This article is from the BBC News website. ? British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.