Improving the NI economy should be job of every department, not just one
THE Northern Ireland Executive is back — and from an economic point of view, this is a good thing, while there are many significant challenges ahead. This may seem like a fairly trite statement, but now, more than ever, it is important to affirm the positive role of devolved government.
I say this because there is a school of thought out there that we place too much faith in the ability of governments generally to ‘run the economy’ and that in actual fact they have little or no influence.
The theory goes that governments merely manage day-today administration of the economy but have no significant role in determining its speed or direction.
I think anyone who experienced the past two years in Northern Ireland will say that the absence of government does have an economic impact.
But beyond the routine administration of the economy, does our government really have a driving role?
I think the answer to this question is, yes, it does have a role, but only if it chooses to take it up. This is the real challenge for this Executive over the medium term. While its current phase of work is concentrated on sorting out issues that have been left to fester over the past two years, that cannot be the limit of its ambition. Choosing to take a role in driving the economy is what will really embed devolved government in Northern Ireland. In order to do this there needs to be a plan. Once again, that might sound like another fairly trite statement, but it is extremely important.
One of the many criticisms of Northern Ireland devolved government in the past has been that individual departments act as silos, concerned only with their own policies and how it directly affects their core responsibilities. This criticism can be made of many governments, but in Northern Ireland’s mandatory coalition system, it is particularly relevant.
The Department for the Economy (DFE) is unfortunately named. Giving one department sole responsibility for such a vast area of policy is neither sensible or realistic. In truth, every government department is, or at least should be, involved in designing and implementing an economic strategy.
DFE has already announced the four pillars of its new strategy: good jobs, productivity, regional balance and decarbonisation. These are four key challenges for the Northern Ireland economy and the department is entirely justified in pursuing them. However, the greatest error would be for the department to pursue them alone.
Achieving any of the Dfe’s four pillars will require its policies to work in tandem with those of other departments.
Take productivity, for example. One of the key challenges here is enabling more women to re-enter the labour market after having children. This requires the provision of affordable and accessible childcare. Childcare is the responsibility of the Department of Education.
If we look at regional balance, there are obvious crossovers with policies that are to be developed by the Department for Infrastructure, and no decarbonisation plan can be achieved without complementary polices in the Department of Agriculeach ture. And that’s before we get into the Department for Finance’s role in funding it all.
An economic strategy for Northern Ireland should be led by DFE because that is what it exists for. But many of the things needed to achieve that strategy are simply not in the control of the economy department.
Once DFE announces the economic strategy, that should begin a process whereby all the programmes and policies necessary to achieve it are laid out. Then each policy should be assigned to its relevant department, followed by a process where each of these interlocking policies is set alongside
of the strategies of all the other departments to see where gaps exist or where synergies are possible. Such a strategy would eventually encompass all Executive departments committed to an agreed implementation plan.
There will, of course, be many who work in government who say that cross-departmental collaboration does occur and that working groups on various issues have been established. We need to move beyond such ad-hoc arrangements.
Several years ago, the Scottish Government made an attempt to force collaboration across departments by developing shared strategies linked to a national performance framework. The experience of the Covid pandemic showed that in emergencies government can break down barriers that ordinarily prevent whole of government responses.
Devolved government is back and it’s a good thing. However, we need to make it work in a way in which it didn’t before. Our economy needs to be set on a new course and it’s going to take a full team effort to get it there. Let’s hope that the positive start to this Executive can be transformed into something significant.