Opinion

Alex Kane: Any Stormont deal must reform entire system of governance

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Dominic Cummings has made a case for reforming Whitehall because of its "dysfunctional institutions with no architecture for fixing error". The same exercise is needed in Northern Ireland. Picture by David Mirzoeff/PA Wire
Dominic Cummings has made a case for reforming Whitehall because of its "dysfunctional institutions with no architecture for fixing error". The same exercise is needed in Northern Ireland. Picture by David Mirzoeff/PA Wire Dominic Cummings has made a case for reforming Whitehall because of its "dysfunctional institutions with no architecture for fixing error". The same exercise is needed in Northern Ireland. Picture by David Mirzoeff/PA Wire

AT the time of writing (Thursday morning) a deal still hasn't been concluded and it looks like the usual run down to the wire.

I'm not 100 per cent certain a deal will, in fact, be reached, but the odds still seem to favour it; and while the DUP and Sinn Féin continue to trade blows and talk tough I think they would prefer to avoid an election right now.

But if a deal is done and it is to be regarded as successful - in other words, with a reasonable chance of survival - it will require four components.

Three years ago Martin McGuinness's resignation letter blew to smithereens the joint DUP/SF pretence that the relationship between the parties was much better than some of us had been suggesting in columns and commentary.

Indeed, I remember a tweet from McGuinness in which he told me that my analysis on a BBC interview (broadcast shortly before his tweet) was inaccurate and unhelpful and conveyed a false impression about the relationship between the parties.

And yet his resignation letter confirmed not only the tetchiness, but also the fact that it had been going on for a very long time.

An Irish Language Act is a case in point. It wasn't included in the 2007, 2011 or 2016 Programme for Government.

It wasn't a red line in any of the series of crisis talks that took place between 2007-15.

I didn't hear any leading SF player mention it as a red line in all that time.

Yet, out of nowhere, it's now a red line. So, for a new deal to work the parties must ensure that issues aren't allowed to fester for years on end; leading to another eruption and collapse further down the line.

It is also essential that all of the parties going into the next Executive - and I think the five main ones will - make a very public commitment to jointly implement an agreed Programme for Government.

That means an end to the silo approach to government, where each party prioritises their own department above everything else.

It means a better way of allocating funds to departments (there was a tendency for the big two to feather their own departmental nests) and a recognition that government only works properly if done under the umbrella of collective responsibility.

I think it's unlikely that there will be an official opposition next time round so the Executive will, voluntarily, have to be prepared to ensure that the public, media and broader civic organisations are properly briefed about how decisions are made and why certain issues are prioritised over other issues.

The hallmark of successive executives between 2007 and 2016 was a culture of secrecy. That has to end.

The nature of politics, of course, is that you can't prepare for every eventuality.

Nobody knows what's behind a corner way, way down the road. But the parties have to adopt or build in some sort of protocol which prevents the unexpected from ending in the usual crisis or stand-off.

Committing to collective responsibility, being more open about the decision-making processes, and jointly delivering the Programme for Government might help establish greater trust and cooperation on a day-to-day basis; more important, though, it might help them when unexpected political, financial or peace process crises emerge - as they inevitably will.

The other component is the collective response to the fallout from RHI. It began as what I described as 'an old-fashioned political scandal involving old-fashioned incompetence and cover-up' but turned into something that went to the very heart of how Northern Ireland was governed.

It wasn't just a rogue department, either. What emerged was a picture of MLAs, ministers, spads, departmental scrutiny committees, the Civil Service and the parties themselves struggling and failing.

Boris Johnson's chief adviser Dominic Cummings has made a case for reforming Whitehall because of its "dysfunctional institutions with no architecture for fixing error".

That sums up Northern Ireland's governance since the first Executive met in December 1999.

It is riddled with bad precedents, on-the-hoof responses, blurred lines of responsibility, scaredy-cat officialdom, amateurish scrutiny and half-hearted, half-arsed debate on the big-ticket issues: all propped up on the foolish, tiresome mantra that, "Sure, it's better than it used to be."

That line may have been valid - just about, mind you - in 1999. It is pathetic today.