Sam McBride: A week when Stormont plumbed new depths of rank incompetence (and four other things we learned this week)

In a week of staggering incompetence at Stormont, our political editor Sam McBride examines five developments at the Northern Ireland Assembly this week.
Stormont has this week been incapable of fulfilling some of the basic functions of a governmentStormont has this week been incapable of fulfilling some of the basic functions of a government
Stormont has this week been incapable of fulfilling some of the basic functions of a government

UGLY DYSFUNCTIONALITY

After the events of recent days, a column about what we learned at Stormont this week can only start in one place: We have learned that our entire Stormont system remains wildly dysfunctional.

The legislature spent hours on Monday debating, and then voted in favour of, Covid legislation even though it was told that it had been already repealed. Meanwhile, the Executive has at points been unable to even agree to even discuss the issue and when it has met there has been deferral after deferral of a decision.

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Far more negotiations have been going on away from the Executive table (although now it is a virtual Zoom call with ministers scattered around Stormont or at home) – chiefly between the DUP and Sinn Fein who have the numbers to decide whether anything can happen and even whether Executive meetings can be held.

January’s spin about leaving behind the chaos and secrecy which led to the cash for ash scandal is now being stripped away and behind that lies something broken, ugly and unable to deliver the basic functions of a government.

One symptom of a failing government is that leaks proliferate and this Executive is now leaking like a burst water main.

The DUP’s deployment of its Executive veto (separate to the petition of concern mechanism in the Assembly) led to accusations from Sinn Fein and many others that it was inappropriate to use a device envisaged to protect the rights of unionism or nationalism.

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Yet the DUP is using a power which stems from the Belfast Agreement’s central premise of cross-community voting as an antidote to simple majority rule (although this precise mechanism was added at St Andrews in 2007).

Increasingly it seems clear that this system, which has always struggled to deliver good government, is supremely unsuited to governing during a crisis of this magnitude.

But equally, a renegotiation of structures which stem from the agreement is not going to happen in the middle of a public health and economic dilemma greater than any which has faced Northern Ireland for decades.

But Give us more power!

With possibly the worst possible timing, Sinn Fein chief whip John O’Dowd told Tuesday’s debate on budget legislation that Stormont should be given more power – over how much we can be taxed.

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The former education minister highlighted that “we are not here today discussing a taxation policy or revenue policies; rather, we are divvying up what is, ungraciously, in my opinion, called the block grant, plus our rates and a few other earnings ... we have to reach the stage where we have politically matured to the point where we have a Budget Bill that is based on taxation and other matters and fiscal powers, because that is where the real decisions are made”.

But while there is a strong argument that Stormont will only mature when it has the responsibility for raising tax rather than simply demanding more cash from London, DUP MLA Paul Frew gave a blunt riposte.

Highlighting that many businesses were still not receiving the money they needed while the Department of Finance is sitting on hundreds of millions of pounds which have been given to it by the Treasury, he said: “They are an absolute farce of an Executive ... More fiscal powers? Are we having a laugh? Go and ask a business, any business, that has been forced to close down whether the Executive should have more fiscal powers. The answer, every time, will be, ‘No way, no chance’.”

Caustic put-down

Jim Allister delivered a withering dismissal of Michelle O’Neill on Monday.

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The TUV leader highlighted that when Ms O’Neill was health minister there was a UK-wide pandemic training operation, Exercise Cygnus, in which her department partook.

Sinn Fein’s Pat Sheehan raised a point of order, saying that Mr Allister was “insinuating that the health minister at the time of Exercise Cygnus had knowledge of the results of or the report from that simulation of a pandemic” when she did not.

Mr Allister replied: “I assure Mr Sheehan that I would never think of or accuse the deputy first minister of being knowledgeable”.

There was laughter, and no further points of order.

Cash for...postponement

After the publication of the RHI Inquiry report in March, the Executive set up a ‘sub-group’ to take control of implementing Sir Patrick Coghlin’s recommendations.

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Conor Murphy was asked how many times that group has met. Once, it turns out – and that was four months ago. A meeting for last week was postponed as the Executive got in some practice for this week’s series of repeated postponements.

Victims’ long wait goes on

It is now almost three months since the High Court delivered a withering verdict on The Executive Office’s refusal to move forward with a pension for victims of the Troubles – something seemingly centred on Sinn Fein’s insistence that the pension should also be paid to certain former IRA members.

But judging from Finance Minister Conor Murphy’s answers in the Assembly on Tuesday, there is still a very long wait ahead for victims waiting for the money they are owed.

Mr Murphy said that work on calculating the cost of the scheme was ongoing, that the British government should pay for it and that there were not even talks with the NIO about the issue.

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Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle said that it was “a moral stain on the history of Ireland that those innocent people, who suffered the most heinous injuries and injustice, have waited a lifetime for the victims’ pension”.

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Sam McBride: DUP had the raw political power to ditch restrictions entirely – so...

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Alistair Bushe

Editor