Owen Polley: The waiting is finally over ... but Programme for Government is still likely to be a damp squib

The PfG is, in theory, supposed to set out the executive’s plans for its term in office.

Power-sharing was restored last February, after the DUP ended its two year boycott of devolution and claimed it had removed the Irish Sea border. At best, ministers have taken over twelve months to decide what they ought to do. But it’s actually much worse than that.

The last assembly elections were held way back in May 2022. And from the summer of 2023 at least, it was obvious that the then DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, was searching for an excuse to revive the executive.

We were led to believe that the parties had discussed together what they hoped to achieve when Stormont returned. Indeed, the idea that they were ready to tackle all kinds of neglected problems formed the central argument for stopping the boycott.

With that in mind, a detailed PfG should surely have been ready for publication within weeks of ministers going back to work.

There is a strong case that the document should even have been published before any executive was formed. The parties could then have decided whether there was a basis for joining, or whether they would have been better to form an opposition.

Ministers at Stormont have taken to describing themselves on occasions as the “Northern Ireland government”. The basic requirement for any government is that its members accept “collective responsibility” for decisions and this is difficult to abide by if no shared platform has been agreed.

We’ve seen the consequences of that incoherence already.

The UUP, for example, rejected the executive’s spending plans, arguing that the department of health did not get a fair share of the budget. Mike Nesbitt nevertheless remained in charge of the department, rather than resigning and leading the opposition.

Meanwhile, when the draft PfG finally appeared, it was a bland document that set out some relatively uncontentious “priorities”, but contained little detail on putting them into practice.

Do we want a “globally competitive economy”? Should we “reform and transform public services”? Shall we make our communities safer? Nobody would reject these aims, but they are useless if they are not backed up by robust plans.

Unfortunately, some of the executive parties, perhaps even most of them, are set against the kind of policies that might achieve these things.

Our competitiveness is increasingly held back by barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Last week, the Federation of Small Businesses told a committee at Westminster that the Windsor Framework had introduced a complex myriad of bodies at “great cost, with no commensurate benefit”.

The sea border, it said, created a “massive, new bureaucracy”.

Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday raised the prospect of the US introducing punishing tariffs aimed at the EU. Great Britain may avoid the worst of this burden, but Northern Ireland’s position is much less clear, thanks to the framework. It is distinctly possible that our companies will have to pay more to trade with America, because we are bound by the single market’s rules and customs regime.

Every week, new issues emerge with the sea border, but nationalists and the Alliance Party don’t want to know. They are more interested in preserving the EU’s grip over Northern Ireland, and redirecting our economy towards the Republic, than creating jobs or prosperity.

The parties’ attitude to the public sector is at odds with many of their declared aims too, and that contradiction is not just confined to nationalists. The PfG acknowledges the need to reform services, but the executive’s policies so far have not suggested that it can do this effectively.

For instance, the department of health’s consultation into rejigging hospitals closed last week. While the document was vague, it acknowledged the need to deliver better services in fewer sites, rather than sending sick patients to understaffed, unsafe facilities on their doorsteps. The health minister, Mike Nesbitt, made an effort to argue this case, but the broader response was discouraging.

You would not have known, from the coverage on the BBC and elsewhere, that multiple expert reports had already identified the problems with our health service, and diagnosed how best to fix them. That case was largely ignored by the media and most politicians. Sinn Fein in particular has made keeping every service open in places like Daisy Hill in Newry a centre-point of its local campaigns.

No doubt, it realises this policy is unsustainable, but it hates Northern Ireland and wants it to fail, so it will continue to block progress. Meanwhile, the unionist parties are trapped in a populist cycle, so, with a few exceptions, their representatives are reluctant to genuinely challenge SF on issues like health.

The first and the deputy first ministers will portray the PfG as a significant breakthrough. The truth is that the delays in its publication, and the lack of meaningful content that it is likely to contain, illustrate some of the biggest reasons that Stormont is failing.