Opinion

Newton Emerson: Is Stormont dysfunction down to exhaustion?

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.

Northern Ireland First Minister Paul Givan (right) and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill speaking to the media at the ICC in Belfast following the signing of the Belfast Region City Deal. Picture date: Wednesday December 15, 2021. PA Photo. See PA story ULSTER Deal . Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire.
Northern Ireland First Minister Paul Givan (right) and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill speaking to the media at the ICC in Belfast following the signing of the Belfast Region City Deal. Picture date: Wednesday December 15, 2021. PA Photo. See P Northern Ireland First Minister Paul Givan (right) and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill speaking to the media at the ICC in Belfast following the signing of the Belfast Region City Deal. Picture date: Wednesday December 15, 2021. PA Photo. See PA story ULSTER Deal . Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire.

The hopeless condition of the Conservative party, on full view at its excruciating conference, raises a question about Stormont that is not asked often enough. To what extent is dysfunctional government in Northern Ireland due to simple exhaustion in office, rather than the complex rules of power-sharing that are usually blamed?

Like the Tories, the DUP and Sinn Féin have been in charge for 12 years - 15 including the last suspension. The DUP has certainly run out of energy and ideas. Sinn Féin may be energised around a united Ireland but that is the only idea it has. Both are utterly sick of each other, also like the Tories.

Although power-sharing gives the top two parties a veto, the electorate can still replace them. The more ossifying rule is the race for first minister introduced at St Andrews, trapping voters into sticking with their designation’s largest party long after they should have put it out of its misery.

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At leader’s questions in the Dail, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín asked if Stormont should be reformed so no party can veto an executive in future.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s replied that May’s election should be honoured under current rules but “there is a case for reform before the election in five years’ time because the politics have changed and the demographics have changed. I do not mean demographics specifically, but the political demographics have changed, if that makes sense.”

As Tóibín noted, this is a significant change in Irish government policy. The British government has already said it wants a review of power-sharing around the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Reform may not be imminent but it is becoming imaginable despite DUP and Sinn Féin objections.

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The cost of living crisis means councils in Northern Ireland may need to put their rates up by 12.5 per cent next year. Belfast councillors have written to Sir Jeffrey Donaldson begging him to restore Stormont to help. Sinn Féin councillor Ciaran Beattie said the “absolutely scary” increase would be six times Belfast’s previous highest raise.

Although the DUP certainly should restore Stormont, some perspective is required. Council rates make up half of domestic rates bills and a 6 per cent increase in those bills would be just over £1 per week. Rebates are available to pensioners and people on universal credit or housing benefit.

Sinn Féin finance minister Conor Murphy has just launched a public consultation on devolving income tax. It must be asked what the point of this is when even our left-wing parties are aghast at modest rises in property tax.

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Pressure on health services across the UK is leading to innovation, albeit driven by desperation. New approaches reported in the past week include a paramedic ambulance trial across London to treat non-critical A&E patients at home and a “mission control system” for hospital beds in Kent, giving all staff real-time data. Similar experimentation should be occurring in Northern Ireland - our health system is under far more pressure, with less central oversight. Senior managers, clinicians and GPs should feel freer to innovate than their counterparts in Britain. In practice, nobody on the ground feels empowered enough to try new ways of working, while ministers refuse to drive change from above. It is the worst of both worlds.

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Last month, Stormont’s Department for Infrastructure claimed it has not made any road safety improvements around Ulster University’s new Belfast campus because the university made no proposals.

This was demonstrably incorrect, as a working group including the university has been making proposals since 2020, with responses from the department on record. The Daily Mirror has now reported that Sinn Féin’s John O’Dowd, caretaker infrastructure minister since May, has refused a request from the university for a meeting and a correction. Is this coming from the minister or his civil servants?

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A fire in a historic building in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter has recalled the 2004 arson attack on the nearby North Street Arcade. The swift arrest of a suspect this week will hopefully mark a contrast with 2004. No arrests were ever made over one of the largest non-Troubles property crimes in Belfast’s history.

In 2006, businesses from the arcade said they would complain to the Police Ombudsman that no serious investigation appeared to have taken place, but nothing came of it. Perhaps the Ombudsman’s office will now recall this, having been forced to close its Cathedral Quarter headquarters due to the latest fire.

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Asda is to build a new supermarket on the old Nortel site in Newtownabbey after a judge threw out an attempt by Tesco to overturn planning permission.

The judge described some of Tesco’s legal tactics as “unsettling” but the gist of its case was almost comic: it complained that Antrim and Newtownabbey council approved an out-of-town store without applying the “town centres-first approach” in Northern Ireland’s overall strategic planning policy.

It is half a century too late for such concerns in Newtownabbey, alas. The entire town is an out-of-town environment. Asda will be no more or less in the middle of it than anyone else.