At what point do we stop making excuses for Stormont?
It’s hard not to feel a bit fed up reading the latest update on the Executive’s legislative progress, or lack thereof. Once again, we’re hearing familiar frustrations of missed deadlines, half-baked delivery, and political posturing taking priority over actual progress. It’s a story Northern Ireland knows all too well.
Opposition leader Matthew O’Toole accused the Executive of focusing on “sham fights and empty motions” instead of meaningful delivery, and frankly, it’s hard to argue with him. Assembly time has too often been consumed by symbolic debates and culture war spats like the row between Sinn Féin and the DUP over Irish language signage, meanwhile, real issues facing people across Northern Ireland are allowed to drift.
A legislative programme may sound like a dry, bureaucratic thing, but in practice, it’s the way the government turns intentions into action.
Of the 21 proposed Bills in the legislative programme which were supposed to be introduced to the Assembly by the end of last year, only 11 have made it thus far. Among those Bills which are yet to see the light of day include the RHI Bill, which will make provision for the future of the scheme, and the Adult Protection Bill, which is a response to the Commissioner for Older People’s Home Truths Investigation into Dunmurry Manor Care Home, and the Certified Professional Environmental Auditor’s (CPEA’s) Independent Review into Safeguarding and Care at Dunmurry Manor.
It will introduce additional protections to underpin and strengthen the adult protection process and align this with best practices in other jurisdictions.
Other Bills that have yet to be introduced include the much-debated Public Health Bill and the Mother and Baby Homes, Magdalene Laundries & Workhouse Public Inquiry and Financial Redress, which will establish a Statutory Public Inquiry to investigate issues of individual, institutional, organisational and state departmental/agent responsibility for human rights violations experienced in Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses between 1922 and 1995 and include provision for The Executive Office to establish a Redress Service to administer financial redress schemes.
What’s particularly galling is that the Executive’s own targets weren’t exactly sky-high to begin with. Even the modest promises laid out in early 2024 now look overly optimistic in hindsight. To then slip out a quiet admission, just days before the Easter recess, that those targets won’t be met feels like an attempt to bury bad news and avoid scrutiny.
Paula Bradshaw of the Alliance Party, who chairs the Executive Office scrutiny committee, has also voiced her concern, highlighting ongoing blockages within the system itself. Ministers, it seems, are struggling just to get items onto the agenda, which points not to slow governance but dysfunction.
To be clear, this isn’t a call to scrap devolution. Having local representatives making decisions here, in Northern Ireland, is still the right approach. Stormont should be a place where meaningful, responsive politics can happen’ where legislation reflects local needs, and where the public can hold decision-makers accountable. When it works, that’s exactly what it offers.
But that only works if the system is fit for purpose. And right now, it’s becoming harder and harder to justify Stormont’s existence in its current form. After years of collapse and political paralysis, the return of devolved government brought hope that maybe, just maybe, things could be different. Yet what we’ve seen over the past year risks squandering that fragile goodwill.
If the Executive can’t even stick to its own self-imposed legislative timetable, then something has to change, and while devolution is worth defending, the version of it we’ve got right now is not. If Stormont can’t reform itself and start delivering, then people will be right to ask: what exactly is the point?
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