Alderman Marion Smith: ‘Please Karen Bradley, bring in direct rule for the sake of public services’

Secretary of State Karen Bradley went through the motions of doing her job by yet again calling a meeting of our warring political parties to discuss the re-establishment of the executive.

The outcome was — surprise surprise — no progress.

I think everyone knows and has known for a long time, they remain absolutely committed to talking at each other rather than talking to each other.

Does she not realise this? After two years as the saying goes — ‘the penny might have dropped’.

Regardless of the reasons for no progress it seems absolutely clear that there is no hope of re-establishing the executive in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime the lack of any real government decision making means that problems in providing our public services continue to grow at an alarming rate.

Our health service is in a mess the education service seems to be going bankrupt and a whole range of important infrastructure decisions are left sitting in the pending tray.

In short the Province is in a complete administrative shambles. While the civil service may make some attempt to keep day to day functions operational it is clear that their real decision making powers are severely limited.

And certainly do not extend to tackling the urgent strategic decisions needed in most areas of government.

The prospect of this situation continuing is frightening.

Against that worrying background many people are wondering what useful practical purpose Karen Bradley is serving in her role as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Her standard mantra that her top priority is the re-establishment of the executive has now become ludicrous.

And apart from that she merely appears in the odd photo opportunity presumably to try to persuade us that she is actually still involved in some remote way.

What she now needs to do urgently in the continuing absence of the executive is get a grip on the decision making process in government by introducing direct rule.

There may be those who argue that this would be undemocratic. That argument is frankly nonsense. The essence of democracy is to have some public accountability for the exercise of power in government.

The real lack of accountability is that at present we have no government and no-one to take essential key decisions. While ideally that might best be done at local level then if the local process cannot be made to work the essential public decision making must rest somewhere else. Life simply cannot go on without someone taking the key decisions.

Direct rule may well be a less than ideal solution but there does seem to be any realistic alternatives. Also of course we have considerable experience of it in Northern Ireland over a number of years.

While it may not have been to everyone’s taste at least it meant that our range of public services operated reasonably effectively and indeed it is difficult to remember many major calamities over that period.

While a local administration may be more satisfactory our local politicians because of the present impasse seem quite incapable of establishing this.

What the secretary of state needs to be concentrating on is establishing some form of direct rule so that what are fairly straightforward and basically administrative decisions can be taken to ensure that the wide range of public services in Northern Ireland actually work.

It may be necessary to modify somewhat how the previous direct rule arrangements worked to take account of sensitivities from various quarters. But if she continues in the present state of limbo the only certainty is an increasing state of chaos in in those public services.

So please Karen Bradley try to do something positive to actually govern this place. I am sure what most people want is to simply get on with their lives.

Karen Bradley this is not some little game of how long you can drag this stalemate out. This for Northern Ireland is a matter of life and death.

I for one am fed up listening and watching through the media the almost daily meaningless rhetoric.

It is about time you actually made a decision.

• Alderman Marion Smith MBE is a member of Ards and North Down Borough Council