At least we have some description of what Stormont ministers do, a list of meetings. We’ve a long way to go to reach the level of a list of achievements.
Maybe they’re so busy having zillions of meetings they’ve no time to get anything done.
What do they do at these meetings? What are the outcomes? Who knows? You certainly can’t see any evidence, any results.
On the contrary, the evidence of dysfunction is all too visible.
In recent weeks the most outstandingly bad example has been the fact that for hours every day the city of Belfast ceases to function.
Traffic grinding to a standstill is only part of it. It’s the far-reaching consequences.
Businesses can’t receive deliveries, takeaway food outlets can’t send deliveries, taxis can’t collect fares, people miss medical appointments, school buses are delayed, parents can’t collect children from carers after work.
The response to all this from John O’Dowd, who this paper suggested should be called the Minister for Congestion, is that people should use public transport.
What an outrageously inadequate response, that produces raspberries of derision from the public.
Does O’Dowd not know that, because congestion is so bad, some bus stops have had to be suspended, that some buses have had to be cancelled because they’re never going to be able to complete their routes?
Does he not know that people have stood waiting for buses for ages only to be told they’re never coming?
The congestion in Belfast at rush hours is so bad that it means the roads into Belfast like the Westlink are blocked solid back to Lisburn.
Regularly the M1 out of Belfast is nose to tail as far as Sprucefield and beyond. An accident on the M2 one afternoon blocked the Sydenham bypass and road from Bangor for hours.
O’Dowd has nothing constructive to say about any of this: no proposals (apart from taking non-existent buses), certainly no solution, no explanation. Yet all this is costing business and commerce millions.
It also means people have stopped coming into Belfast to shop which is, shall we agree, far from ideal in the weeks before Christmas.
People who wish to get home before late evening are opting for out-of-town shopping at Sprucefield or the Abbey Centre rather than risk spending the evening in a traffic jam.
However, gridlock is only the most egregious example of a wider dysfunction at Stormont. Nothing works because there’s no collective action, no-one in charge.
It not simply a matter of so-called ministers operating in silos. We have parties actively blocking progress in areas where they disapprove of policy.
For example, Andrew Muir will never be able to make progress with cleaning Lough Neagh because the DUP veto an environment agency.
Farmers will continue to pollute rivers and kill thousands of fish because, when he was minister, Edwin Poots capped fines at a derisory level. The DUP will always privilege farmers no matter how much damage they do.
The British government demands Stormont raises more money locally. According to Caoimhe Archibald, the DUP have blocked her attempts to table her plan to raise the cap on household rates four times, so that it can’t happen before 2026.
Why? Was the plan not agreed with the Treasury and signed off by both First and Deputy First Ministers? When is a collective agreement not a collective agreement?
We have the daft spectacle of Mike Nesbitt grandstanding as a one-man opposition, refusing to accept his budget allocation but unable to do anything about it.
The result is constant sniping between him and DUP MLAs. Any chance of him trying to gain the support of other executive members so they can pull together for the general good of public health? No. Didn’t think so.
And so on and so on. There’s no money and there isn’t going to be, but the one thing that’s missing isn’t just lack of money.
It’s the fact that executive members and parties are pulling against each other to undermine, undercut, block, get one over on each other.
There’s absolutely no indication that they sit around a table and try to work out the best way to spend the money the British send for the benefit of the maximum number of people here.
It’s not as if they’re pressed for time. The assembly only meets a couple of days a week for lack of business.
Maybe it’s because ministers can’t agree collectively on the best way to enhance people’s lives that they have so much time to engage in hundreds of photo-ops and meetings, none of which seems to have a discernible result.
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