Stormont’s Programme for Government
An exercise in gaslighting
12 March 2025
Emma Little-Pengelly & Michelle O’Neill.
The Stormont Executive recently unveiled the Programme for Government (PfG), its first programme for eleven years. The PfG was agreed in draft form last September before going out for consultation. The finalised version, titled “Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most”, sets out the Executive’s roadmap for the remaining two years of its mandate. At its launch, and during the Assembly debate that followed, the First Minister and deputy First Minister were effusive in their praise for the PfG. Michelle O’Neill hailed it as a “significant milestone for the government" that promised “hope and opportunity” while Emma Little-Pengelly described it as a “very ambitious” programme for reform.
Programme for Government
The PfG identifies nine key priorities for Stormont departments. These are as follows:
Grow a globally competitive
and sustainable economy
Deliver more affordable
childcare
Cut health waiting lists
Ending violence against
women and girls
Better support for children
and young people with special educational needs
Provide more social, affordable
and sustainable housing
Safer communities
Protect Lough Neagh and
the environment
Reform and transformation
of public services
One key difference between the draft PfG and the finalised plan is the inclusion of a number of targets by which delivery can be measured. These include treating an additional 70,000 hospital patients and building more than 5,000 social homes by 2027.
Gaslighting
Despite boasts by the leaders of the Executive the threadbare nature of the PfG is impossible to cover up. The major criticism is that it sets out objectives that are just left hanging in mid-air and unconnected to the funding and planning that would be necessary to make them a reality. The response of political and economic commentators to the PfG was scathing with one accusing the Executive of “gaslighting” the public.
A prime example of this was the section that dealt with health. With one in four of the population on a waiting list Northern Ireland is by a long way the worst performing NHS region in the UK. To address this the PfG pledges to spend up to £80 million a year to prevent waiting lists getting any longer and £135 million a year to reduce them. However, just a day later, the finance minister admitted that none of this funding was guaranteed. It is the same story with housing. Figures show there are 47,936 households on the social housing waiting list in the North. To address this the PfG pledges to build at least 5,850 new social homes over the next two years. However, it turns out that this is not quite as it appears and the commitment is merely to “start work” on these homes. The failure of the Executive to deliver on its previous target of building 2,500 social homes a year doesn’t inspire confidence.
On the environment, there is nothing proposed that will have any impact on the amount of slurry and sewage runoff which causes the toxic green-blue algae responsible for the pollution of Lough Neagh.
Employment rights
Another area where the PfG retreats on previous commitments is employment legislation. A consultation on the proposals to strengthen employment rights was launched last July by the then economy minister Conor Murphy. As recently as January the First Minister Michelle O’Neil cited the promised legislation, which had now come to be known as “The Good Jobs Bill”, as evidence of executive delivery. The legalisation, which is supported by trade unions, is not particularly radical and really only amounts to a replication of measures already in place in GB. While the PfG does make reference to legislation the commitment is not to implement the bill but to simply ensure the executive considers it at some stage. There’s no guarantee it’ll even make it onto the ministers' agenda for discussion, and if it does there’s a strong likelihood it’ll be vetoed by the DUP, whose representatives have already criticised its content.
Totems
Even on issues that have become totems for nationalism, such as the Irish language and the Casement Park stadium, the PfG is very weak. It is only this week that the Executive got around to advertising for the posts of language Commissioners despite this proposal being part of the New Decade New Approach agreement that restored Stormont five years ago. This also appeared to be a hurried reaction to a critical report from a UN committee, rather than something that was planned. Such tokenistic and ad hoc measures fall a long way short of what was promised by the Irish Language Act. The fact that anything done in relation to the Irish language also has to be “balanced” with something for Ulster Scots just adds insult to injury. On Casement Park there is no commitment to providing the funding that would advance the construction of a new stadium. While delays on these “cultural” issues are put down to a lack of finance they are also evidence of the existence of a DUP veto on anything that would be symbolic of an advance for nationalism.
Water infrastructure
There is a sense of unreality about the PfG with its objectives completely divorced from the practicalities, especially around finance, that would be required for delivery.
An obvious example of where priorities and practical realities do not match up is on housing. The particular issue here is the interconnection between new housing development and the upgrading of wastewater infrastructure. For a long-time housing organisation, as well as planning professionals, have been making the point that the north’s ageing water and sewage system is the greatest impediment to increasing housing supply.
Apex, a social housing association, stated recently that the construction of 1,800 homes in Derry had been stalled because of a lack of infrastructure. Last month, a conference hosted by the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Association’s (NIFHA) heard that the lack of water infrastructure capacity across the region would take a decade to address even if the necessary investment was available now.
The problems around housing are compounded further by the fact that investment in water infrastructure in the immediate period is actually forecast to decline. NI Water, the sole provider of water and sewerage services in Northern Ireland, faces a 21.7% reduction in resource and capital funding in 2024-25. This has resulted in eight major sewage projects designed to support housing development and prevent untreated pollution pouring into Belfast Lough being scrapped.
NI Water officials have publicly stated that the water and sewage system is “completely out of capacity” and that the company needs an extra £800m over the next seven years to make improvements. This critical issue, which has a knock-on effect on so many others, is almost completely ignored by the Stormont Executive. At one point the Sinn Fein minister responsible for infrastructure did raise the possibility of a developer levy, which would involve developers paying for the water infrastructure themselves, but this now appears to have been dropped.
Alternatives
The most common excuse peddled by the Stormont Executive for its poor record is a lack of support from the British government. However, this is only partially true. While most of its funding comes in the form of a block grant from the Treasury there are a number of devolved tax and borrowing powers that could be used to generate additional revenue. The most obvious of these is the regional rate - a mildly progressive form of tax levied on residential and business properties. The structure of this tax hasn’t changed in years despite a massive rise in asset values over the same period. There are also major concessions to wealthy individuals and businesses embedded within the system. Residential rates are capped on properties of £400,000 and above while businesses classified as industrial are exempted. It is estimated that lifting the cap and removing exemptions could raise additional hundreds of millions of pounds annually. Instead, Stormont choses to maintain one of the most regressive taxation systems in Europe.
The Stormont Executive could
also make use of the borrowing powers available to it.
The main power is the Re-Investment
and Reform Initiative (RRI), a £3 billion Treasury loan facility
that is meant to be used for buildings and infrastructure. Under
its terms the Executive can borrow up to £200 million every year,
repayable over 25 years at just over the basic rate of interest.
This facility could be used to provide the capital investment required
in the housing and water sectors. Another potential source for investment
through borrowing are local councils. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Fiscal
Council, set up under the 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal to advise
the executive on its finances, has noted that councils are free to borrow
for any purpose under their remit. While this would require Stormont
transferring some responsibility to councils – with local roads and public
transport being obvious areas – it could create a new source of capital.
Given the earlier reorganisation of local government that took place, boosting
of the powers of the so-called Super Councils would seem a next logical
step.
These proposals aren’t particularly radical. They are technocratic solutions which at best are mildly progressive. However, what they do imply, whether in regard to rates or borrowing, is a rise in taxation. While such a rise would be modest, and only bring Northern Ireland up to the levels that are in place in the south and GB, the local political parties have already ruled this out.
Status quo
The PfG reveals the severe lack of imagination and innovation within the Stormont Executive. But this is not just down to the failings of individuals or parties. The problem is with the nature of the political system itself. Despite the labels of Assembly and Executive these institutions do not represent government in any meaningful sense of the word. They are no more than the public face of a huge bureaucratic apparatus whose primary purpose is the distribution of sectarian patronage. This is the unspoken, yet widely understood, foundation of the political settlement in the north.
This is not a problem for political parties such as the DUP and Sinn Fein. They are comfortable with the system despite the poor outcomes in terms of public services and policy. They are also comfortable with the class inequalities that exist in northern society. Those who stand most exposed are the trade unions and NGO’s who have promoted Stormont as a vehicle for reform and a shield against austerity. Such claims have been exposed as completely false. The harsh austerity that will accompany the British government’s shift to militarism, and which will impact most heavily in Northern Ireland due to its higher level of welfare dependency, will expose this even more.