Owen Polley: Our Stormont leaders issued meaningless new year messages rather than set out plans for solving Northern Ireland's problems

I was reminded of that programme last week, as Stormont politicians issued their New Year messages.

Homer, you see, is a terrible employee, but Mr Burns presents him with a special prize because the nuclear plant he works at has made him sterile. It’s part of a plot on behalf of the owner to avoid financial liability. And it relies on stringing together superlatives that mean absolutely nothing.

That was the tone of some of the party leaders’ statements too. There were plenty of adjectives like ‘first class’ and ‘top quality’, but few hints of a plan to address Northern Ireland’s problems, restore its place in the UK economy and rebuild its struggling public services.

In government, both Labour and the Conservatives have argued that the executive must raise more of its own revenue if its finances are to become sustainable. That idea was dismissed by the local parties and it formed almost no part of the budget plans they published last year.

There are, of course, many examples of waste and duplication in the public sector that could be targeted before people in Northern Ireland are asked to pay more. The difficulty is that those savings are likely to involve taking on the province’s powerful trade unions, which our ministers have so far shown little inclination to do.

This unpopular work may even involve closing facilities or laying off public sector workers, which are exactly the type of tough decisions that the parties at Stormont traditionally shrink from.

On the same theme, the SDLP leader, Claire Hanna, talked about prioritising extra housing in her New Year message.

What she did not say is that one of the biggest issues preventing us from building new homes and infrastructure is an absence of water charges.

In the run up to Christmas, the chief executive of Northern Ireland Water, Sara Venning, told a Stormont committee that our waste water system was at breaking point. The manager of the Lough Neagh Partnership, Gerry Darby, recently suggested that a lack of appropriate facilities was contributing to problems with pollution.

And in the News Letter, the economist, Dr Esmond Birnie, wrote just days ago that the executive’s refusal to address sewerage problems, by looking at charges, amounted to an ‘anti-growth’ and ‘anti-environmental’ agenda.

None of the parties at Stormont, including the SDLP, which has the luxury of being in opposition, is prepared to advocate charges for Northern Ireland. Indeed, the DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, used his New Year press release to rubbish the notion that the executive should look at ways of raising money.

Meanwhile, in his message, the Ulster Unionist leader, Mike Nesbitt, was busy invoking the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. During 2025, the health minister claimed he would focus on ‘change for the better’. Most people in Northern Ireland will hope that he succeeds. The Christmas period again saw hospitals and ambulance crews struggling to cope.

In his statement, Mr. Nesbitt emphasised that he shares responsibility for the NHS with his executive colleagues. That implied that his department should be their overwhelming priority.

In fairness, the health service is suffering everywhere, thanks to the UK’s ageing population and unprecedented levels of immigration.

Northern Ireland’s difficulties are worse, because successive devolved administrations failed to reform the way care here was provided. A series of reports recommended that we should have fewer, better acute hospitals but ministers never put them into practice.

Last year, the health department under Mr Nesbitt published a document that slightly rejigged this diagnosis.

It emphasised that every inch of hospital estate would be needed, but recognised services have to be streamlined, so doctors can concentrate their expertise in fewer sites. That was diplomatically put, but it did not disguise the fact that services at some hospitals should be closed and delivered elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the executive’s biggest party, Sinn Fein, has campaigned consistently to prevent any closures at all in its heartlands. As a consequence, largely for political reasons, some services have remained open that are barely safe. Doctors cannot even advise their patients officially to go to more appropriate facilities.

This shows what Mr Nesbitt is up against. But it also suggests he could be more candid with the public about the problems that he’s facing. The NHS’s troubles are certainly not all down to a lack of funding.

Another leader, Alliance’s Naomi Long, used more slippery language in her New Year message. Her party, apparently, wants a ‘prosperous and united community’ here.

Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to prosperity is increasingly the Irish Sea border. This barrier also caused much of the instability and division in Northern Ireland over the past four years

Alliance, you will recall, demanded that those arrangements were ‘rigorously implemented’.

Indeed, it gave cross-community cover for the idea that Northern Ireland must be cut off from the rest of the UK, voted recently to maintain trade barriers and remains slavishly committed to introducing every new EU law, regardless of the issues that causes for business.

Long’s was just one of the more blatant disconnects between what a party says and what it does, in these New Year statements.

In 2025, from all our parties, we could do with more honesty and fewer fine-sounding, but ultimately meaningless words.