Announcing that work on the A5 will begin, DUP Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly noted how vesting homes and farmland became a highly emotive issue. It led to years of delay while costs ballooned, as is often the case.
So why not take a fresh look at how vesting is done? Paying market rate for houses does not even cover the owner’s financial loss, let alone compensate for the trauma of losing their home. An additional ‘home loss payment’ can be claimed but only up to 10 per cent of market value, capped at £45,000. This would be £20,000 for the average house in Northern Ireland, which scarcely covers the cost of moving.
It would be cheaper to offer homeowners multiple times market value if it avoided even brief delays to major projects. Guarantees could be given that a suitable replacement dwelling will be found, or built if necessary. This could include exemption from planning restrictions on one-off housing in the countryside.
Conversely, a more robust approach could be taken with farmland. Farming is a de facto nationalised industry, with farmers receiving 90 per cent of their income as a basic grant, paid per hectare. They may own the land but frankly, Stormont owns them.
As farming is the main source of pollution in Northern Ireland, with little enforcement of environmental regulation, perhaps rather too much indulgence is shown when farmers make environmental objections.
Farming is a de facto nationalised industry, with farmers receiving 90 per cent of their income as a basic grant
**
Mike Nesbitt has published his plan to reconfigure the hospital network. The UUP health minister was promptly accused by the DUP, Alliance and the SDLP of producing a mini Bengoa report – yet another broad vision lacking it detail.
Nesbitt promised details will follow and he was keen to stress that none of the 11 major hospitals will close. However, some will end up looking more like regional specialist centres as services are moved around. The plan document says Northern Ireland can only sustain five general-purpose hospitals, which it identifies as Altnagelvin, Antrim, Craigavon, the Ulster and a “Belfast Hospitals Campus”.
How will other parties react as the implications of this sink in? The questions put to Nesbitt in the assembly suggest MLAs understand reform is essential but that is no guarantee they will support it over local objections.
Although few health reforms require executive approval, the DUP or Sinn Féin can choose to call in a decision and veto it, or they might come under pressure to do so. Nesbitt could also seek the executive’s approval to give himself political cover, much as his UUP predecessor, Robin Swann, did to avoid commissioning abortion services.
The UUP has been deservedly criticised by other parties for not supporting the executive’s budget. If those parties refuse to support health reform, which is officially executive policy, they will be no better.
**
The Department for Infrastructure is spending its ‘active travel’ budget on resurfacing major roads.
By marking out a useless cycle lane during the works, or describing a pavement as a greenway, it can say this is the object of the exercise while coyly adding “the work will also include resurfacing of the carriageway”.
A £2.4 million example in Ballykelly has made headlines this week, although more for causing congestion.
It follows the £1.75m resurfacing of the Coleraine ring-road, begun in June and also absurdly described as an “active travel scheme”.
The advantage of this, apart from spending money however you like, is that it provides a simple way of meeting green targets.
Stormont’s 2022 Climate Change Act requires the Department for Infrastructure to “develop plans” to spend at least 10% of the transport budget on active travel.
It is becoming clear what that planning entails.
**
Belfast SDLP councillor Carl Whyte has called on Northern Ireland’s £10 billion local government pension fund to divest its £700,000 holding of Israeli bonds. This highlights the existence of the fund and how little it invests here. Stormont has spent years trying to get similar funds in Britain and North America to invest in our infrastructure.
The Northern Ireland fund, which covers council staff but not Stormont civil servants, puts 7.5 per cent of its money into infrastructure, yet targets only £50 million at Northern Ireland. The fund’s managers are legally required to obtain safe returns for members but Stormont could offer them that opportunity. On infrastructure, the fund expects 5.5 per cent above inflation, currently 2.2 per cent. That is less than the 10 per cent US funds typically expect.
It is intriguing to consider the impact on the public sector if staff could see their savings put into public assets around them. As Stormont looks after most of those assets, the impact would be even greater if its civil servants had a similar pot to invest. But of course, their gold-plated retirements are funded directly by the taxpayer.
**
Sinn Féin has criticised DUP Education Minister Paul Givan for meeting the Loyalist Communities Council. The matter was raised at a Stormont committee by Pat Sheehan, who called the LCC “an unrepresentative group, an unelected group”.
This was his answer to DUP criticism that Sinn Féin is on thin ice condemning paramilitary links. When the same matter was raised at the previous week’s committee meeting, he had lectured the DUP on Sinn Féin’s “mandate”.
Both parties are arguing over a false equivalence, or at least an out of date one: the DUP talking to the LCC is not the same as Sinn Féin talking to the IRA, or indeed to itself. A better comparison is the letter Sinn Féin sent in 2020 to Saoradh, inviting it to discuss “strategy and cooperation” on a border poll.
When the Sunday Times revealed the letter two years later, Sinn Féin said “we have always stated that dialogue and engagement – even with those who support armed factions – is a vital part of the peace process”.
Unless Sinn Féin has changed this view, it has no grounds to condemn Givan.
**
Alliance is one of the 10 political parties, north and south, that are “open to a conversation about planning and preparing” for a united Ireland.
Or so Sinn Féin MLA and national chairperson Declan Kearney has informed his party’s annual conference.
In reality, Alliance has been agonisingly careful not to say this, but there is no downside for Sinn Féin in trying to bounce Naomi Long’s party into clarifying its position, one way or another. Republicans could then either claim a convert, or denounce an electoral rival as crypto-unionist after all.