IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU’RE FROM, THIS HAS IMPACTED US ALL
The Northern Ireland Assembly is expected to return today after two years in which healthcare, transport and education all suffered from a lack of investment
TODAY the Northern Ireland Assembly is set to return after two years of stasis — the second time a political party has called a halt to the processes of government in the North.
The first was when Sinn Féin pulled out of the Assembly over the Irish language act for a period which lasted three years before normal service was resumed.
But Brexit threw a spanner in the works thanks to the complications of borders between the EU and the UK, which destabilised the provisions made under the Good Friday Agreement and the DUP pulled out of the Assembly in 2022.
Initially the situation threatened the fragile peace that was so hardwon under the Good Friday Agreement. But though that has thankfully not come to pass, instead what has happened in the two years since politicians left their seats in Stormont is the further disintegration of the most essential of public services, as the DUP refused to come back into power unless the sea border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK was removed.
During the standoff, politicians were still getting paid their full wages, despite the fact that the health service has been crumbling, roads are falling into disrepair and public sector workers found their pay lagging behind that of their counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales.
It wasn’t until January when 170,000 public sector workers from teachers to bus and train drivers and civil servants downed tools in one of the largest strikes the North has ever seen, grinding the country to a halt, that the DUP finally took heed that it was time to get back to work.
This week has seen movement as the DUP and the British government have agreed an end to routine checks on goods arriving from England, Scotland and Wales that are destined to remain in Northern Ireland. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has already argued that the terms of the new command paper ‘moved far beyond the principles set out by the Good Friday Agreement’.
But at this stage most people in the North are just relieved that some semblance of government will be returned to power.
In a recent article in the Belfast Telegraph, Andrew McCormack, the retired Northern Ireland Civil Service Permanent Secretary, slammed the British government for its inaction.
‘Whatever may be the rights or wrongs of the resignations of the ministers of the Northern Ireland
Executive, the worst feature is the abdication by the UK Government of its inherent responsibility to govern,’ he said.
Today, power will be put back in the hands of the North’s own elected representatives and those on the ground now want to see change, including trade union Unison NI’s regional secretary Patricia McKeown.
‘Our political leaders have to focus on a range of issues that need urgent attention, such as delivering safe staffing across our health and social care services and moving on a universal approach to free school meals,’ she says. Thousands of her members have seen their peers in other parts of the receive pay rises while theirs stayed the same.
‘With ministers now expected to be in place soon, we require the release of the promised funding without delay. This is urgently needed to kickstart negotiations on delivering decent pay for our members. Thousands of workers have been left behind on pay in the midst of the cost-of-living crisis. All parties must recognise that the next step is direct engagement with unions.’
Few families in Northern Ireland have been left unscathed by the absence, with reports of 150 calls to a GP before getting an appointment, horrendous waiting times in hospitals for treatment, bulging A&E wards, increasing poverty and a rise in the use of food banks.
Jonny Currie is regional head of the Trussell Trust, a UK-wide food bank charity. He has seen use in the North rising at a higher rate than anywhere else in the UK.
‘In the first six months of the last financial year we are the region in the UK where food bank use is rising at the greatest rate, which is really concerning for us,’ Currie says. ‘We are the smallest part of the Trussell Trust network here in Northern Ireland — we are only
‘A range of issues need urgent attention’
5 per cent of the total number of Trussell Trust Food banks across the UK — but we are the busiest.’
Currie has lived in Northern Ireland all his life and he says it’s not hard to notice the stagnation of public services. Very basic things like getting a GP appointment or referrals to other health and social care agencies are taking far longer.
He’s noticing potholes in the roads on his commute to work that aren’t being filled because there’s no money and, earlier this year, libraries were told there was no funding to buy new books.
‘More and more people are coming to food banks, where a food parcel is only one thing out of a range of things that they need but they are falling through the cracks of services that are failing so the only thing that is left is to refer someone to us,’ he says.
There is a huge swathe of society that is struggling and not only those who are in receipt of benefits.
‘Almost one in four people who come to our food banks have someone at home who is in work,’ he says. ‘So folks are really struggling and after two years of inaction, while the assembly can’t solve everything, it can choose to prioritise the policies and programmes that can make a difference.’
He points to Scotland, where the devolved assembly has implemented Scotland-wide strategies to end the need for food banks and introduce things like child payment.
Over the last two years — and, indeed, in the three when Sinn Féin had halted the Assembly — community organisations have been stretched to their limits trying to offer support to the vulnerable in society.
Roisin McLaughlin is manager of
the North West Community Network, which covers Derry and Strabane, an organisation made up of over 150 different community organisations which it supports.
‘There was a crisis at the beginning of last year when groups would have been normally getting their funding as government departments weren’t able to confirm [amounts] so groups didn’t know whether they were going to get funded or not. Then funding was given for three months and then it was month to month, so it was very much a stop/start situation.’
There is a rise in demand for the support that the community and voluntary sector provides but no support for them.
As funding has been short-term, employment within these sectors has also been short-term.
These are the very groups that have been stepping up to help the most vulnerable in the absence of any new policy direction.
Now the Assembly is returning, Currie says the hope is that it will prioritise policies to lift people out of destitution.
‘We have an anti-poverty strategy in draft form that is on the shelf, we have reviews of discretionary support, we have reviews of welfare mitigations that need to be completed,’ she says.
Currie, who grew up in a predominantly Protestant area, says that concerns about the border should not be simply ignored.
‘Some people have all these concerns that come from a genuine sense of fear,’ she says. ‘I don’t think that can be ignored but it has to be weighed up alongside, well, what do we want in terms of public services and a healthy democracy? Are there some hard choices we have to make in terms of compromise?’
Paul Doherty is a community activist in West Belfast, who set up a food bank and community hub called Foodstock from his garage, as a response to the poverty he was seeing in his community.
‘I grew up in Turf Lodge, which is probably one of the most impoverished places on these islands,’ he says. ‘When I grew up, my own family struggled with the impacts of poverty but also friends that I was at school with, neighbours and the people around me.
‘The people I went to school with are now struggling with their own children and Foodstock setting up was to be a practical response to what was happening in the community.’
It has grown in size and volunteers are now reaching over 500 families on a weekly basis, people who have been referred to them by schools, health trusts, cancer charities and other organisations.
There is absolute despair and poverty in the communities around him but where there has been government failure he says there are organisations and volunteers stepping in to provide support.
At Foodstock there is a cafe where people can come for advice and help on any number of things, there is a uniform hub and it also runs 11 breakfast clubs.
Daily he hears of parents who aren’t sleeping, who aren’t eating, who are worried about the lives of their children and not being able to provide for them.
Again, many of those seeking help are in employment.
There are so many ways a working assembly could help — a cap on school uniform prices, universal free school meals for all, small changes in legislation that would improve lives.
‘It doesn’t take a lot of effort from Stormont but the very fact that it’s not up and running has that impact whereby there are so many people struggling as a result of what has been the impasse for a number of years now,’ he says.
In May, he stood for the SDLP and was elected to Belfast City Council in an effort to make positive change.
‘One of the things I brought was a right to food campaign around the fact that we believe access to food should be a human right for all,’ he says.
‘Belfast is now a Right To Food city — we should have universal free school meals. The very fact that a food bank is facilitating breakfast clubs in Belfast in 2024 should send alarm bells.’
Doherty feels the majority of people are despondent and have given up on politics, pointing to the election turnout figures.
‘Communities are pulling together trying to find practical ways in which you can get people through what has been a very difficult situation,’ he says. ‘We need to bring that sort of community sprit, that sort of solidarity, into a working government to get people around a table working together. People are really despondent.’
It is hard to get across the level of suffering people in Northern Ireland are experiencing.
‘I had a parent in here this morning telling me that they feel guilty, they don’t feel like a parent at all, they feel as if they have let their children down,’ he reveals. ‘But I would argue in fact that they have been let down by a lack of government here.’
The Foodstock deliveries get the same reaction of relief on both sides of the political divide.
‘There is a need for a priority of a robust anti-poverty strategy that will tackle these issues at the heart of our communities here and we need people around the table to implement that, to ensure there is a practical response to what is happening right now,’ says Doherty.
He also believes there should be some sort of structure put in place to ensure parties can no longer walk away from government.
‘We can’t have people throwing their toys out of the pram whenever they want and bring the institutions down because we see the impact that is having,’ he says. ‘We are seeing the shocking high levels of poverty and we need a government in place to tackle that.
‘We need to move away from the age-old narrative of them and us and move together as one. That’s easier said than done but in terms of what we are seeing here on the ground in our communities, something has to change.
‘It doesn’t matter where you are from, this is impacting all communities across the board and people in a position who are representatives of communities across the North have a responsibility to step up and try to tackle the problems that we are seeing here daily.’
Opposition politicians in the North are now calling for a system to be put in place to avoid a third Assembly breakdown and while there has been some trumpeting from the DUP and Sinn Féin in regards to who won this particular round, many feel this is not serving the people who elected them.
Currie feels the needs of the people must come before any kind of constitutional debate.
‘We need to take some small steps towards a stable government and towards accountability before any constitutional questions from across the political spectrum come into play,’ he says.
‘No one should be forced into destitution for Ulster, for a new Ireland or for any partisan political position like that. We just need a functioning government to carry out the basics of a functioning constitutional democracy.
‘I think the co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement need to work harder with the political parties here to make sure the institutions are sustainable and fit for purpose so we don’t end up in this position again.’
Many seeking help are in employment