Michelle O’Neill has caused some bemusement by insisting the executive has had “a very strong track record of delivery” in the year since it was restored.
Any first minister has to say this, of course, but Sinn Féin has particular reason to project a positive message.
This has been its first year in office as Stormont’s largest party, while November’s Irish general election has consigned it to five more years of opposition in the Republic.
Making Northern Ireland work is the best way to show Sinn Féin works, north and south.
Positivity is also required to counter the miserabilism that backfired in the Republic. Endless, grandiose complaining about everything not only failed to resonate with voters, it caused annoyance and attracted ridicule.
The party has got the message. As one of its TDs told The Irish Times last week, Sinn Féin must counter the impression of being “a bit samey and a bit shouty”.
It is now the duty of every republican to cheer up.
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It is difficult to claim Stormont is a success while the health service is collapsing, hence Michelle O’Neill’s pledge of executive support to UUP health minister Mike Nesbitt.
“We’ve work to do – one minister will not solve that, there needs to be a collective effort,” she told reporters, following an assembly debate.
O’Neill’s pledge denies Nesbitt the excuse of lacking support. In reality, there is little the self-contained Department of Health requires from other ministers to get its job done.
This is uniquely true in Northern Ireland, where health and social care have been integrated for half a century. In Britain, social care is the responsibility of councils and Westminster has been struggling for decades to bring councils and NHS together.
Failure to coordinate social care with hospital discharges is the primary cause of this winter’s health crisis in Northern Ireland, as it is every winter.
Money is no excuse for the UK’s worst performance, despite Nesbitt’s claims of underfunding. He has more to spend per head on health and social care than any UK region outside London.
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The long-running saga over the proposed gold mine in the Sperrins is doomed to run a while longer, after a planning inquiry was suspended until March due to basic procedural errors by the Department for Infrastructure.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP remain implacably opposed to the project, citing fears for the environment and public health.
DUP MP Sammy Wilson spoke out in favour as the inquiry opened, bolstering the unfortunate appearance of an orange-green split on the issue.
“I think it is madness to turn down this opportunity... which could create hundreds of well paid jobs and earn money overseas for Northern Ireland,” he said.
As with fracking, there is a tendency to conduct these debates as if we must choose between pollution or poverty.
A less excitable approach would be to ask if our full-employment economy still needs jobs and investment so badly we must suffer any blot on the landscape – even one that could be safely managed.
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The Department of Education and Northern Ireland’s four teaching unions are once again in a face-off over action short of strikes (ASOS) – what used to be called ‘work to rule’ – where staff do only only their contractual minimum.
A threat of action has been suspended for pay negotiations but has not been lifted.
The low-profile nature of ASOS means there is little awareness it has been underway in schools here almost continuously since 2014. At any given time, the impact can seem like merely a nuisance – fewer after-school clubs, for example, or no parents’ evenings. But the cumulative impact on every child’s education can be enormous.
Withdrawal of cooperation with inspectors also means significant problems have built up across schools without being spotted, let alone addressed.
More attention needs to be focused on these impacts. How much of the degradation in schooling that is blamed on the pandemic is really the result of ASOS?
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Belfast City Airport has started fining drivers £100 for dropping passengers off outside its £3 drop-off zone. Lurid warning signs have appeared and miscreants are being sent demands from a private enforcement company.
Given this determination to squeeze every penny out of motorists, it must be asked how committed the airport is to improving pedestrian links to the nearby Sydenham rail halt.
Improving the link is one of the more plausible projects in the recent All-Island Strategic Rail Review, with a feasibility study by the Department of Infrastructure and the airport due to report in “spring/summer 2025”.
Perhaps a footbridge will be built with a coin-operated turnstile at one end.
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The new Irish coalition’s draft programme for government has a shared island section that largely copies the previous programme in 2020, with one curious addition.
It pledges to “advocate for the re-establishment and full operation of a Northern Ireland Civic Forum as envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement.”
The DUP and Sinn Féin chose not to resurrect the forum after the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, correctly judging it to be a ridiculous talking shop.
It was effectively replaced by the executive’s six-person Compact Civic Advisory Panel, launched under the 2015 Fresh Start Agreement and reaffirmed in New Decade, New Approach. The Irish government was a participant in both deals.
The panel has yet to be formed and nobody has shown much interest in it. In theory, that might be an argument for restoring the forum.
In practice, it shows how little interest there is in the whole concept – apart from whoever pushed for its inclusion in the programme for government.
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With great fanfare, Keir Starmer has launched his government’s Action Plan for Artificial Intelligence.
The prime minister was reportedly as close to excitement as he can be while regaling journalists with the economic potential of AI and how the UK can exploit its post-Brexit freedoms to develop world-leading technology, all while the EU mires itself in Luddite regulation.
Neither Starmer nor the plan mentioned Northern Ireland will have to follow EU regulation under the Windsor Framework.
This was a strange oversight as the science minister responsible for artificial intelligence and for writing the plan is Peter Kyle.
He was Starmer’s shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland from 2021 to 2023, during which the Windsor Framework was agreed.
Kyle has not mentioned any of this either. It is almost if they have forgotten about us.