A new report has found that a ‘governance gap’ in Northern Ireland amid a Budget crisis is leaving public services to deteriorate.
The paper, from independent think tank, Pivotal, said a lack of strategic planning meant services were stuck in a vicious cycle, where problems were growing and the ability to tackle them was shrinking.
Northern Ireland has been without a functioning Government for more than a year after the Democratic Unionist Party pulled out of the power-sharing Stormont Assembly in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Senior Public Servants have been left in charge of Government Departments in the absence of elected Ministers and are facing significant challenges, including around finances and public services.
The Pivotal report said the powers of Public Servants are limited, leaving them unable to make significant policy changes.
“Civil Servants, who have no democratic accountability, have found themselves in the impossible position of trying to maintain services with reduced budgets,” the report stated.
“Secretary of State (Chris Heaton-Harris) has declined to step in, aside from on a couple of specific issues, saying it is for local politicians to make decisions and urging the restoration of the Executive.”
The report recommends that new structures be put in place that allow major decisions to be made about public services amid long-term periods of institutional collapse.
It also urges the United Kingdom and Irish Governments to give greater priority to the restoration of the institutions, and to supporting them when they are in place.
Meanwhile, Mr Heaton-Harris (pictured), who is the Minister responsible for the Province’s affairs at Westminster, told a meeting of the British-Irish Association at the University of Oxford that while resolving the political impasse was his top priority, political dysfunction was limiting opportunities for Northern Ireland’s people.
He said it was a source of extreme disappointment and frustration that after 18 months, political stasis continued.
“Northern Ireland’s problems will not be fixed with a sticking-plaster funding settlement, which will not do anything to address the structural problems that have been building for years,” Mr Heaton-Harris said.
Belfast, 5 September 2023
