Growing population needs more funding

THERE are more of us around than ever before. You can probably tell that by the traffic congestion trying to get in or out of Belfast city centre, or by the growing waiting lists for our hospitals and the difficulty in getting an appointment for our oversubscribed GP or dental surgeries.

And there, in one sentence, is a snapshot of the problems a growing population can cause, unless, of course, there is the necessarily similar growing investment in the services we all expect to be able to rely on.

The running of any successful country — one which looks after its population in the way its population looks after it through taxation — does not come with any built-in, future-proofed plan. That has to be developed as needs must, always with an eye on what the future might bring. But eyes have been consistently elsewhere. And those needs are struggling to be met.

Of the four home nations, only England saw its population rise at a faster rate than Northern Ireland in the decade up to 2022. The population leapt by 5.3%, adding almost 100,000 people to the number living here.

That we continue to have the youngest population – median age 40, a rise over the decade but still younger than the rest of the UK – of the home nations shows there is likely to be a greater population growth in the future.

People are living longer and Northern Ireland, which has the most youthful population in the UK, needs to start making allowances for that.

As things stand, though, we can hardly afford to keep what we have.

A new Assembly has been running for just a couple of months and those first few weeks of new governance have been dominated by calls for more money, greater finance for health and education, cash to fix our struggling roads network, greater investment in the economy and more.

There are concerns that public services will continue to be the victims of underinvestment for another decade. After all, we’re beginning the latest attempt at self-governing from a position where the financial difficulties being faced have been years in the making due to underfunding.

It’s not a healthy position to be in if we want to continue to provide the best education for our children, have the best medical care for an ageing population and provide the jobs people need to enjoy a quality of life.

All the more reason why Northern Ireland has cause to make a case for a fairer funding mechanism to meet the needs of its population.