WITH a health and school system "in crisis" and a "struggling economy", Northern Ireland is "unprepared" for the future, a policy paper from a new independent think tank is warning.
`Pivotal' presents a long catalogue of serious failures in its first publication `Moving forward - putting Northern Ireland on track for the future', released today.
It suggests that the north faces many economic and social challenges, all of which require policy solutions, regardless of our future constitutional status.
Six areas requiring urgent action include:
* The economy - With the highest percentage of low-paying jobs of any UK region, it is one of only three places where "more jobs pay poorly rather than well" and more than a quarter of adults are neither in work nor looking for work - the highest rate of economic inactivity in the UK.
* Health and social care - Little has been done to make structural changes needed to provide for rising demand, with "signs of crisis clearly showing" as 120,201 have been waiting over a year for planned care, compared with 1,154 people in England and 4,176 in Wales.
Meanwhile, just five per cent of health spending is on mental health provision - half the proportion spent in England, despite estimates showing instances of mental ill health are 25 per cent higher.
* Education - While 94 per cent of students achieve at least five A*-C GCSEs in grammar schools, just 52 per cent do in secondary schools and 52 per cent of pupils entitled to Free School Meals got those grades, compared to 80 per cent of those not entitled, with 78 per cent of pupils receiving them attend secondary schools, and just 22 per cent grammar schools. There were also 451 schools over budget with a £62.6 million total funding shortfall.
* Poverty - Northern Ireland has the highest percentage of children living in long-term workless households out of all UK regions - 13.6 per cent compared with the UK average of 8.2 per cent, with children growing up in workless households "much more likely to have lower educational attainment, be unemployed, and live in poverty later in life".
* Climate change - Northern Ireland "has yet to take a seat at the table", having set "no emissions targets... a decade after the UK Climate Change Act... and enacted no legislation". Over the last 10 years emissions here have fallen by just 9 per cent compared with 27 per cent across the UK.
* Community relations - Key public services like education and social housing remain largely divided along lines of perceived culture and community and there is a racially motivated hate crime an average of three times a day, despite the relatively small number of people here from ethnic minorities or from other countries.
Pivotal director Ann Watt said these "major areas of need... (require) everyone's attention, right now".
"Crises like a crumbling health service, and schools going over budget, are not on the horizon - they are here," she said.
