The Department for Infrastructure is not just failing on roads and public transport.
Its other main responsibilities, NI Water, planning and flood prevention, are also a disaster – sometimes literally so.
Despairing observers are asking if the department is simply too big to function. Sinn Féin minister John O’Dowd, a veteran of the executive, is only the latest incumbent to lose control.
Stormont merged its 12 former departments into nine in a 2016 reorganisation. This was an impressive administrative achievement, delivered to a tight schedule.
It would be a pity to have to reconsider it and start multiplying departments again. Besides, planning was the only major function the Department for Infrastructure gained in the reorganisation.
The obvious alternative would be to pass some of its powers to councils. Responsibility could be transferred for local roads and pavements, local buses and more aspects of planning and regeneration.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK or Ireland where local roads are not the responsibility of local government.
As far as I can establish, it may be the only place on Earth where this bizarre situation applies.
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In a panicked response to traffic chaos in Belfast, the Department for Infrastructure is temporarily allowing all taxis into some city centre bus lanes.
The decision has been condemned by transport experts, who believe it will do nothing for the private motorist while delaying buses and endangering cyclists.
Even the taxi industry, which has long sought access to bus lanes, is unhappy. Companies and drivers have complained the announcement is too rushed and the access is too restricted.
Black taxis and wheelchair-accessible taxis, already permitted in bus lanes, do not want others joining them.
Industry bodies have complained that letting Class C limousines into bus lanes will confuse motorists and spark a free-for-all, as such vehicles are unmarked and look like private cars.
Alas this concern may not be as public-spirited as it appears. Class C licenses are also used by Uber drivers. Other taxi operators have long denounced this as a “loophole” they want closed.
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As the infrastructure minister loses control, DUP education minister Paul Givan may be getting a bit too much of a grip.
Questions are being asked about the appointment of DUP councillor and former minister Mervyn Storey to chair the board of the Education Authority (EA), the main agency of the Department of Education.
The EA is a dysfunctional fiasco and there is little the board can do to improve it, as has only a scrutiny role over management.
Moves apparently afoot inside the department are more intriguing. There has been a reshuffle of senior staff over the past month, presumably at Givan’s behest, including the replacement of its top civil servant by the former head of the Prison Service.
All the department will say is “it is not unusual to make personnel changes to improve operational efficiency and to reflect ministerial priorities”.
This is hardly a glowing tribute to previous arrangements.
The umbrella body for the main teaching unions says lack of communication on the reshuffle is “extremely worrying”.
Anything that worries the classroom comrades should be considered good news until proven otherwise.
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The Magee Taskforce has published its plan to expand university provision in Derry, delivering the executive’s key commitment of almost doubling the student population to 10,000 by 2032.
Sinn Féin economy minister Conor Murphy, whose remit covers universities, welcomed the plan as a “game-changer” for economic development across the north west.
However, neither he nor the executive have announced any money. The plan requires £350 million in public funds plus the same from private investors.
The executive could readily find its contribution over the timescale involved, so why not commit to that?
Just as importantly, Murphy has not mentioned raising the cap on Ulster University’s maximum student numbers. If it cannot take on more students, it will have to relocate them to Derry from Belfast and Coleraine, something it has already tried many times without success.
The cap is only necessary because Stormont subsidises tuition fees.
Removing that middle-class giveaway would solve everything, in Derry and beyond.
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Sinn Féin has published an annual report for its ‘Commission on the Future of Ireland’, the party’s discussion exercise on a united Ireland.
The 23-page document contains no proposals. It merely describes all the events organised over the past year and advises readers to look up the report for each.
Those reports contain no proposals either – just selected excerpts of back-and-forth conversations that took place.
Sinn Féin says a united Ireland is not its project alone but that hardly precludes it generating proposals to contribute to a wider debate.
The only concrete details we know about Sinn Féin’s idea of a united Ireland, courtesy of party president Mary Lou McDonald, are that it would have the Republic’s flag and anthem and the Twelfth of July would be public holiday.
However, Sinn Féin has fallen silent on the Twelfth since 2021. To that extent, its planning and preparing appear to be going backwards.
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The SDLP has also been churning out waffle on a united Ireland based on its own discussion exercise, the New Ireland Commission. However, it is up to a bit more behind the scenes.
The party is in constant conversation with its friends inside the British and Irish Labour movements. This could have paid off significantly had Irish Labour joined the new coalition in Dublin, as was expected (and is still not impossible.)
In London, pressure against Labour running candidates in Northern Ireland might seem to have little electoral relevance but it is politically important – and rather cynical.
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Voluntary organisations will be “devastated” by the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, according to a survey of members by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (Nicva). It wants the government to reimburse them and it has a case.
Most public bodies will be reimbursed on the basis that there is no point in the government taxing itself. Although most voluntary organisations are legally classified as charities, they are entirely dependant on public funding, so the same argument could be said to apply.
Nevertheless, it is a little galling to see Nicva demanding a tax exemption when it spends the rest of its time demanding more public spending.
Where does it think all those government grants come from?