Belfast Agreement at 25: Suneil Sharma - We should celebrate the 1998 deal but not the inertia that followed it

​When the Belfast Agreement was signed in 1998, I was 39 and after 30 years of conflict, I saw for the first time being able to commit myself to build a future here.

I was born and worked here, the son of a father and mother who migrated here in 1957.

Weeks later, in August 1998, the Omagh bomb which in addition to destroying many lives, punctured hopes for a peaceful future. In 2005 we got over the last great hurdle, which was the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, followed in 2007 by an unlikely political bond between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, later to be described as the Chuckle Brothers. This partnership brought hope, that a society riven by sectarianism could become one built on common dreams and values. But no.

I do recognise the Belfast Agreement closed the book on violence as a tool for change. It embedded the principle of consent in respect of Northern Ireland’s constitutional future and the principle of power-sharing as part of the new political dispensation. Important institutional reforms, notably in the form of the new PSNI, the Police Ombudsman, the Policing Board and the Human Rights Commission. On the issue of policing and as a member of the Policing Board from 2001 to 2011, I would like to thank Hugh Orde for implementing the Patten Commission reforms. In 2009 we saw Martin McGuinness’s clear condemnation of violent/dissident republicanism after the murder of police officer Stephen Carroll and two soldiers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar. I was on the Policing Board at that time; for me, it was a high point in political leadership. Then there was a cordial meeting between the Queen and Martin McGuiness in 2012. All good so far.

EU and the UK spent billions of pounds on peacebuilding. This money went to everyone from ex-prisoner groups to community groups. Much of the money was handed out without real evaluation criteria let alone clear measurable objectives or as we entrepreneurs call it, key performance indicators. If it took money to tie in all the protagonists to the conflict, so be it. A University of Ulster study, The Story of Peace pointed out that “… some 50 per cent of all armed conflicts slip back into militarised violence within five years of signing a ‘peace’ agreement”. So, in effect conflict was taken off the streets and into Stormont. For two communities where trust was in short supply, a mandatory coalition (an oxymoron) with inertia designed in, is as good as it gets.

The economy improved with more foreign investment, though from a low base, and there are shiny new buildings and the development of the Titanic Quarter and the Cathedral Quarter. We still have an over-bloated public sector; public spending remains at almost 60% of GDP and productivity languishes in the lower divisions.

We still operate an apartheid education system costing an additional £200m in addition to embedding division both in the form of faith and educational inequality. The educational establishment has failed to understand the role of education in an interconnected and fast-changing world. The Northern Ireland Skills Barometer report from the Department for the Economy and Ulster University's Economic Policy Centre found that 30% of school leavers achieved less than five GCSE from A*-C including English and Maths.

And all the while the peace process trundled on, we had the cash-for-ash scandal, for which no heads rolled. More recently the DUP minister Gordon Lyon’s in a piece of political populism handed out post Covid £100 vouchers, a policy supported by the UUP, Alliance, the Social Democrat and Labour Party and our socialist friends in Sinn Fein.This £150 million handout went to retail behemoths rather than to those ‘key workers’ earning the minimum wage whom we clapped every Thursday night during Covid.

Dozens of Stormont bills have been passed, including financial assistance for political parties, high hedges, marriage equality, human trafficking, and many others. Political dysfunction has resulted in suspensions, which account for 40% of the assembly’s existence. According to the Guardian, of the 871 motions and amendments debated in the current assembly from 2000, only 51% had cross-community support. The anachronism known as the Petition of Concern has been tabled 160 times. It was used by the DUP to scupper equal marriage proposals in 2015 and the sanctioning of MLAs for misconduct by the Commissioner for Standards.

The assembly lacks both the political will and the intellectual capacity to address important health service reforms, reform of the civil service, Invest NI and the Housing Executive. Bloated and inefficient local government rubber stamp vanity projects like Belfast Stories at a cost of some £90 million, while we have a planning system that has been deemed the worst in the UK. A change to free prescription and domestic water charges could raise some £700m. The question is, would you trust the intellectual capital on the ‘Hill’ with more of your money?

Unionists continue to engage in political harm by rejecting the Windsor Framework and working-class Protestants have not yet realised that the greatest threat to them is not republicans, nationalists, Catholics or for that matter a border poll, but sadly like in the past, it is the quality and vision of their so-called political leaders. Unionism marches on like a newborn giraffe, republicanism is confident and on the rise. However, like unionists, Sinn Fein resides in their echo chamber with Ireland’s Future jamborees where they are unchallenged about the substantive nature of its mantra, of a ‘New Ireland’. The so-called middle ground parties particularly the SDLP and the UUP have been gutted, unable to navigate the post-1998 political landscape; the consequence is, The All Things to All People party have stolen their clothes and left them politically naked.

I am genuinely grateful for the end of violence that the Belfast Agreement delivered. All those attending the 25th-anniversary celebration and who contributed to the delivery of the agreement, your name is already etched in history. The debate around our future is not whether we maintain the Union or create a 32-county Ireland but whether the electorate will continue to be lumbered with a dysfunctional political system and a political class that seem unable to grasp the challenges of an ever-changing world.

• Suneil Sharma is an entrepreneur, political blogger, and former Policing Board member