Editorial: It’s no wonder that Translink might be cutting services for funding reasons because Stormont simply will not make difficult decisions

Nothing better illustrates Stormont populism tipping into incompetence than our story today where Translink explain they will have to cut services for funding reasons.

The background to this situation is easy to understand – there is not enough money for a full array of services in the same way that there is not enough money to fix potholes or cut grass verges at junctions, etc.

And the reasons for that shortfall in money are also easy to grasp – we have been highlighting them for years in this newspaper. Stormont simply will not make difficult decisions. It will not make the enormous savings that are possible in health by rationalising provision, which might mean the ‘closure’ of certain services or units in order to provide the same in a better hospital in a more affordable way – a course of action suggested by health experts for years.

MLAs grant every public sector pay award they can, not linking it to performance. They fail to tell the wider population that the 25% employed in the public sector in Northern Ireland get rolls royce pensions that the 75% employed in the private sector will never get.

Stormont spends tens of millions of pounds each year on legacy investigations in which vastly paid lawyers (junior barristers, let alone KCs, earn more in such cases than consultant doctors) work on cases that are overwhelmingly probes into security force failings.

And so on.

This incompetence with money impacts on Translink. But worse, Stormont has frozen bus and rail fares, to please the public, instead of explaining that all the other commitments the assembly makes means that these fares will have to rise. Thus Translink has even less money. And meanwhile, Stormont’s costly policy of having lowered free transport to age 60 at a time of rising life expectancy remains firmly in place.

What a sorry saga.