Opinion

Stormont's answer to everything is more money

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill speaks at a rally for farmers, processors and retailers at Stormont to highlight volatility in prices earlier this month
Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill speaks at a rally for farmers, processors and retailers at Stormont to highlight volatility in prices earlier this month Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill speaks at a rally for farmers, processors and retailers at Stormont to highlight volatility in prices earlier this month

Despite Peter Robinson’s positioning promise of “no business as usual”, the assembly managed a relatively normal day on Monday - thereby revealing its true dysfunctionality.

First up on the normal business agenda was a statement from Sinn Fein agriculture minister Michelle O’Neill on “action to address the current crisis”, where ‘crisis’ referred not to the fall of Stormont but to the fall of milk prices. Cheaper food is a bad thing when the assembly is not discussing poverty, deprivation, food banks or whatever.

O’Neill began by revealing that Northern Ireland’s dairy industry increased output by 9.4 per cent in the last financial year. However, she mentioned this by way of congratulation rather than explanation. Supply should apparently keep rising without prices ever falling and if the necessary demand is not there, the EU should step in “to make much-needed money available quickly to our farmers” (on top of the 87 per cent subsidy they get just for working the land.)

In longer term, further funds should be provided to help dairy farmers enter “new markets” abroad. Whether these should also be markets where supply and demand have no affect on prices, the minister did not say but in an answer a few minutes later she did say: “the free market does not work.” Of course, the free market is working perfectly well for milk consumers but that must be prevented and indeed never mentioned, all while seeking new and even freer global markets.

Stormont's answer to everything is more money
Stormont's answer to everything is more money

No suspensions means MLA salaries unaffected

In short, the only consistent point in the minister’s desperate blethering was sucking up to the farming lobby. But did anyone else pull her up on this? Not a bit of it. One by one members of the SDLP, UUP, Alliance and TUV, along with independent unionist John McCallister, rose to grab an udder of their own by thanking O’Neill for her wonderful statement and offering farmers their unqualified sympathy. By the end of this revolting performance, the entire chamber boasted a veritable creamy moustache.

The next item of normal business was a debate on the accuracy of deprivation statistics in rural areas. Heaven forbid that after eight years in office, parties or members might claim their constituents’ lives have improved. Instead, representatives from the UUP, Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance queued up to complain that official measurements of deprivation do not make their constituents look miserable enough. The DUP then concurred en masse when the vote was taken, because although it had left only one ‘gatekeeper’ in the chamber, all its members were still on hand to stop rogue nationalist and republican decisions, by trooping through the division lobby in full agreement with nationalists and republicans.

Stormont's answer to everything is more money
Stormont's answer to everything is more money

Sinn Fein/DUP relationship was never going to work

The basis of everyone’s concerns was a 2010 report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which found rural dwellers must spend 10 to 20 per cent more than urban dwellers to access normal services - a problem allegedly not being reflected by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Of course, when the Planning Service proposed addressing precisely this problem in 2007 through modest restrictions on one-off housing in the countryside, MLAs from all parties went berserk. The God-given right, mainly of farmers, to plonk a bungalow down in the middle of nowhere could not be frustrated, so how can the whole assembly complain about the inevitable consequences? At least rural dwellers now have access to cheaper milk.

The final item of normal business was an SDLP proposal for universal free childcare. Everyone agreed this would be marvellous. Nobody pointed out that under present budgetary conditions they might as well pass a motion that it only ever rains at night.

If these are the dying days of this assembly it was a fitting bookend, because its first item of normal business when devolution was restored in 2007 was an SDLP motion for free universal personal care for the elderly. Although this proposal was unfunded and ignored the new executive’s budget, other parties were loathe to say a word against it and it passed with only one amendment from Alliance, which was not in the executive at the time.

So from start to finish, from privileged farmers to poor parents, from special pleading to general pleading, Stormont’s answer to everything is more money for everyone, always. Until its politicians and voters face a financial day of reckoning, why would that change? There is no point introducing opposition or any reform at all to a political system whose one ideology, beyond nationalism and unionism, is that of a cargo cult on Christmas Island.

newton@irishnews.com

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