There is delusion at the top of the Stormont Executive, the First and deputy First Ministers made clear yesterday.
Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little Pengelly believe the real problem is that the public don’t understand how great their administration is, rather than moving to accept the absurdity of how little it has achieved.
If you’re an optimist who thinks the Executive is inching towards taking years of difficult untaken decisions, or that it might accept it can only spend more money if it raises more money, Stormont’s leaders yesterday indicated unambiguously this is unlikely to happen.
In a rare appearance before the Assembly committee meant to scrutinise the department (they haven’t been there for a year), the two ministers dismissed criticism as either a media exaggeration or public misunderstanding.
The session again reinforced the limp nature of an Assembly scrutinising an Executive where most of those acting as scrutineers are members of governing parties.
During the first 25 minutes of the hearing, just one question was asked — largely because the committee allowed long opening statements in which the ministers told MLAs what they already knew: the success of The Open, public appointments they’d made, legislation they’d proposed, and so on. That’s not scrutiny.
Ms Little Pengelly said there was “a narrative out there” which didn’t accord with the “delivery” from the Executive which she said was widespread.
Referring to the bland Programme for Government, Ms Little Pengelly implausibly claimed “we have made a strong start in relation to all of those priorities”.
When SDLP MLA Sinead McLaughlin said Stormont was now “toxic” as DUP-SF relations fracture, Ms O’Neill said the issue was “are we delivering? … and the answer is yes”.
At a time when Lough Neagh is worse than ever and Stormont can’t even agree on curtailing the two main sources of pollution — agriculture and sewage — and when one of Ms O’Neill’s own ministers can’t so much as put a bollard in Belfast’s Hill Street (blaming “underfunding and austerity by the British government”), this is nothing short of delusional. Ms Little Pengelly boasted about £20m for Lough Neagh, part of it for “a Lough Neagh report agreed by the Executive”.
This is classic Stormont: pouring money into consultations, consultancies and reports, while failing to take the common-sense — and free — option to just stop the pollution we know is pouring into the lough.
Ms O’Neill claimed that “what doesn’t make the news is good news and progress and delivery”.
Yet her department is so incompetent it couldn’t organise its own press conference at The Open, keeping journalists waiting for hours.
She said: “I often hear people speaking about the Executive not taking the hard choices … I’m not prepared to push hard-pressed households to pay for more while public services are in decline and it’s not of their making.
“The people who say ‘make the hard choices’, they mean charge people more. That’s not how we’re going to operate. We’re going to transform and fix public services and change things around.”
While disagreeing with Ms O’Neill liberally, Ms Little Pengelly made clear her broad agreement on this issue: "Michelle is absolutely right; when people sometimes accuse the Executive of not making the hard decisions, when you question them to say 'what are those hard decisions?', they talk about introducing new rates or charges for people, they talk about closing hospitals … there are decisions that we're not going to take; that doesn't mean we're not taking other decisions that are difficult, that are challenging."
Despite uniting on this, it was unmistakable that Stormont’s leaders are now publicly divided.
When asked by the TUV’s Timothy Gaston if she could define a woman, Ms O'Neill said: "I really wish you were genuinely interested in the topic but you're not. You're here to cause division." Mr Gaston denied that was the case, saying she was evading the question.
By contrast, the deputy First Minister said firmly: “I don’t accept a redefinition of ‘woman’; the vast majority of women don’t accept it … I know what a woman is; I am a woman.”
Similarly, they disagreed about meeting Donald Trump.
The First Minister made clear she wouldn’t be going to the state banquet for President Trump and urged the DUP to focus on Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
But Ms Little Pengelly sharply pointed out that while Ms O’Neill’s justification for not doing so is Trump’s stance on Israel, he is pursing the same policy as President Biden – who she was delighted to meet.
As the ministers also publicly disagreed on whether the Army should be barred from a Londonderry jobs fair and on the Irish Sea border, the deputy First Minister said that some journalists are “obsessed about trying to look at relationships and potential fractures in relationships”.
Former minister Claire Sugden shot back: "I don't think it's just coming from the media. I don't think it's just coming from people who want to create mischief … I don't see any form of collective responsibility".
Ms Little Pengelly dismissed a sharply critical recent report of the Executive’s performance by the think tank Pivotal.
She presented the Pivotal report as a problem for Pivotal rather than the Executive, asking: “Why do people not hear the delivery that’s actually happened?”
She said it was “a nonsense to say things haven’t been delivered”, citing improvements in childcare, more places for special needs children and more money for health.
Ms O’Neill said that if there was one thing that united them, it was ending violence against women and girls.
Yet she didn’t even mention – and nor did anyone else – the PSNI’s chronic underfunding. How can they be serious about protecting women – or any other part of society – while the police wither and the Chief Constable’s pleas for support go unanswered?
Ms Little Pengelly spoke robustly and without equivocation against racism and sectarianism, saying she supported the police acting robustly in each case.
Again, the underfunding of the police went unmentioned.
And so it circled back to the refusal to take difficult choices: blame the media, blame opposition politicians, blame a think tank, blame anyone other than those who have the power to tax, to spend and to legislate.
This is an Executive which the public can see isn’t working, and now its leaders are turning on each other.
It feels like the next election campaign has now started, and hope for serious Stormont reform has ended.
by WaluigisHat
12 comments
I see Sam McBride’s name on it? I stop reading.
So I do.
We don’t have leaders, we have actors with a script and PR management.
When was the last time you were successfully elected Emma? Does my head in.
Sam McBride wrote all that shit just to forget that ELP wasn’t even elected to the position
The guy is a professional fucking idiot
I swear to fuck, I’m living in an episode of Brass Eye
>hope for serious Stormont reform has ended.
Hope springs eternal, but really? Was there ever even a chance??
Whether you agree with SM or not the Stormont executive is a joke. They seem to spend the days arguing amongst themselves in the chamber instead of actually achieving anything with regards to change in this place.
The health service is shocking.
The PSNI are laughable.
And minorities continue to be hounded out of their houses.
Yet we just shrug our shoulders and accept it.
Why?
SF/DUP, two cheeks of the same arse!
Typical Sam McBride shite.
The bottom line is that Stormont can’t deliver meaningful issues. Its hamstrung by being both a devolved council with few real powers AND a mandatory coalition. How many decisions do you think any other government in the world would reach if the two main opposing parties had to agree on everything?
If people want meaningful, fundamental change here, then the only option is reunification. Until people can accept that its juat going to be this shit in perpetuity
Disagree with Sam on pretty much everything, but he’s right here.
The current executive is a PR sham, a Potemkin Village and it’s failing everyone here but not tackling anything.
Glossy PR photos saying ‘aren’t we great, a taig and a prod can smile together’ aren’t gonna fix our dire public services.
I say this as a Republican as well, I don’t think NI can actually work, but quit the charade and admit it instead of pretending everything isn’t on fire.
By mindlessly re-electing the same two parties over and over we are collectively endorsing the shit show we are being delivered.
There is a reason SF hasnt made it into government in the south and that’s the electorate don’t trust them with things that matter like health and the economy, and it would take me too long to list all of the faults of the DUP
The main, perhaps only, great thing about Stormont is its basic function as a creche to keep numerous buck eejits off the streets where they might cause trouble. In administrative terms, they’ve achieved next to nothing, the Lough Neagh debacle being just one more example. A bunch of sixth year students could seriously do better.
But isn’t it preferable to have this bunch of toddlers arguing over flegs, parades, legacy and play park names in a safe enclosed environment rather than on the streets or even worse, Nolan? Sure, when they have one of their marathon tantrums and the place is shut, we don’t really notice and the public anger is about them still getting paid, but if it means people aren’t being shot and stuff isn’t being blew up, then it’s worth it, no?
Let’s just pat them on the head, tell them they’re doing a great wee job and get on with real life.
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