Northern Ireland isn’t working is a common enough gripe, stretching from the SDLP, through Alliance to the new Secretary of State, Chris Bryant.
He was quoted in the Belfast Telegraph the other day saying he was ‘bored’ by the ‘sticking plaster’ nature of the North’s public finances and the endless problem is setting an annual budget. He wants some ‘financial discipline’ and a multi-year settlement.
‘We can’t have constant overspends and this process of coming back to us every year asking for more money,’ he scolded.
The minister doth protest too much. The history of the post-GFA settlement tells us that there is ALWAYS more money to be had in order to keep this show on the road.
Mr. Bryant will prove to be as lousy a poker player as any of his predecessors. Whether a prudent use of taxpayers’ cash or not, more moolah will be forthcoming.
The simple fact remains – this is the best Northern Ireland has ever been governed. It wasn’t made well and it wasn’t built to last. It has endured. A broken, expensive and irrational place. Now mercifully minus the daily killings.
But the place bleeds money and can’t work any better than it does – for two reasons. The first is that it’s a bankrupt system; entirely reliant on the regular application of financial defibrillator pads – courtesy of an indulgent Whitehall system. The British taxpayer pays a hefty price to maintain this unreformable farce in an unloved and faraway place.
The NHS is a prime example. It doesn’t matter how much is spent on it; it won’t ever really improve. Northern Ireland is too small in terms of its population and too large in terms of geography. You can’t have expensive specialist care everywhere. Challenging the fairytale thinking that you can is why Mike Nesbitt quit as health minister the other week.
But assuming the finance did exist, enough trained workers do not. The obvious remedy to improve matters is to integrate into the rest of the island’s healthcare system to achieve greater economies of scale and shared specialist services (something impossible to do with Britain given the small matter of the Irish Sea).
But unionist politics makes such an obvious and rational move entirely impossible. So, people in the North continue to suffer.
The second dysfunction is the result of its system of government – consociationalism – forced coalition in a divided society. It’s not meant to work in the long haul. Bluntly, there is no incentive for either Sinn Fein or DUP ministers to take tough decisions – such as advocating new taxes or charges or making cutbacks – and risk depleting their voter appeal.
For Sinn Fein in particular, there is zero incentive to make Northern Ireland work better because they don’t want it to exist in the first place. Not that they are actively undermining efforts to make the place better. If anything, Sinn Fein politicians shoulder the weight of keeping Stormont going – often against their own interests.
Chris Bryant will come to learn these essential facts of life. He is there to write cheques and that’s about all. It is impossible to expect much in the way of progress and we should stop pretending things can get better. Northern Ireland is going out of business and United Irelanders of various political stripes are simply looking past its stifling confines – as they should.
Northern Ireland isn’t working is a common enough gripe, stretching from the SDLP, through Alliance to the new Secretary of State, Chris Bryant.
He was quoted in the Belfast Telegraph the other day saying he was ‘bored’ by the ‘sticking plaster’ nature of the North’s public finances and the endless problem is setting an annual budget. He wants some ‘financial discipline’ and a multi-year settlement.
‘We can’t have constant overspends and this process of coming back to us every year asking for more money,’ he scolded.
The minister doth protest too much. The history of the post-GFA settlement tells us that there is ALWAYS more money to be had in order to keep this show on the road.
Mr. Bryant will prove to be as lousy a poker player as any of his predecessors. Whether a prudent use of taxpayers’ cash or not, more moolah will be forthcoming.
The simple fact remains – this is the best Northern Ireland has ever been governed. It wasn’t made well and it wasn’t built to last. It has endured. A broken, expensive and irrational place. Now mercifully minus the daily killings.
But the place bleeds money and can’t work any better than it does – for two reasons. The first is that it’s a bankrupt system; entirely reliant on the regular application of financial defibrillator pads – courtesy of an indulgent Whitehall system. The British taxpayer pays a hefty price to maintain this unreformable farce in an unloved and faraway place.
The NHS is a prime example. It doesn’t matter how much is spent on it; it won’t ever really improve. Northern Ireland is too small in terms of its population and too large in terms of geography. You can’t have expensive specialist care everywhere. Challenging the fairytale thinking that you can is why Mike Nesbitt quit as health minister the other week.
But assuming the finance did exist, enough trained workers do not. The obvious remedy to improve matters is to integrate into the rest of the island’s healthcare system to achieve greater economies of scale and shared specialist services (something impossible to do with Britain given the small matter of the Irish Sea).
But unionist politics makes such an obvious and rational move entirely impossible. So, people in the North continue to suffer.
The second dysfunction is the result of its system of government – consociationalism – forced coalition in a divided society. It’s not meant to work in the long haul. Bluntly, there is no incentive for either Sinn Fein or DUP ministers to take tough decisions – such as advocating new taxes or charges or making cutbacks – and risk depleting their voter appeal.
For Sinn Fein in particular, there is zero incentive to make Northern Ireland work better because they don’t want it to exist in the first place. Not that they are actively undermining efforts to make the place better. If anything, Sinn Fein politicians shoulder the weight of keeping Stormont going – often against their own interests.
Chris Bryant will come to learn these essential facts of life. He is there to write cheques and that’s about all. It is impossible to expect much in the way of progress and we should stop pretending things can get better. Northern Ireland is going out of business and United Irelanders of various political stripes are simply looking past its stifling confines – as they should.