You wait ages for the assembly to arrive and then two come along at once.
Yes, there are now two Stormont assemblies – the one which Michelle O’Neill says has “a very strong track record of delivery”, and the one which has effectively collapsed public services here.
In fairness, the First Minister recognises the two assemblies’ existence as she glides seamlessly between the two.
While she praised her Assembly for its record, she later pointed out that under the real assembly, our health service is facing “dire and diabolical” pressures.
In claiming “achievements”, she was referring to the assembly’s record only since it was reconvened last February.
The Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea in 1975 declared there was no history before that date. So they called it Year Zero to brainwash the population into forgetting the past. The assembly’s Year Zero began last February.
Nothing happened before then, including Michelle O’Neill’s walk-out as health minister in 2017, when Sinn Féin collapsed the assembly for three years.
As for the other assembly, she accepted no responsibility for the health system’s failings, merely saying “There needs to be a plan to fix” it.
She did not say the recent draft Programme for Government contained no plan, just platitudes.
Sinn Féin blames the collapse of the NHS on Tory austerity. However, without a plan, how would they know what to spend additional money on?
Perhaps they could plan for additional buildings and facilities at all our hospitals under a capital development programme?
However, Stormont is quite useless at capital works. A Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report last year revealed that only one of the executive’s seven ‘flagship’ capital projects announced in 2015 (Year Zero minus 10) had been fully completed.
Delays and overruns in those and four other high-profile projects cost the executive an additional £1.94 billion.
The regional maternity hospital, due for completion 10 years ago, might be opened this year, at a cost of £97 million instead of the original £57m.
The regional children’s hospital, which was due to open in 2020 at a cost of £223m, will not now be ready until at least 2029 at an estimated cost of £590m.
Sinn Féin has described the 10-year delay in opening Dublin’s Children’s Hospital as a “fiasco”. What is a fiasco in Dublin is an achievement in Belfast.
Had the Executive not squandered almost £2 billion of its capital budget, it would have had enough money to build a new hospital.
Instead, Belfast City Council gave planning approval this week for a new private hospital on Boucher Road, backed by a US venture capitalist.
This illustrates the true purpose of American involvement in the Good Friday Agreement and explains why the First and Deputy First Ministers will always be welcome at the White House.
The three main Stormont agencies for capital projects are the Strategic Investment Board, the Procurement Board and an organisation known as Construction and Procurement Delivery.
The NIAO says the current commissioning and delivery arrangements of the three are not fit for purpose. It previously pointed this out to the Stormont Executive, but it was ignored.
Audit Office reports used to carry weight. Today they are largely disregarded, as there is no culture of accountability in the public sector.
Even the head of the civil service is not accountable. In Scotland and Wales the head of the civil service has personal responsibility for efficient and effective use of government resources. Here, Stormont departments are separate legal entities under the direction of the minister and the permanent secretary.
So Stormont’s bureaucracy allows politicians to ignore public service efficiency and effectiveness and to concentrate instead on photo opportunities, self-promotion and flag waving.
This lack of accountability permeates the assembly, where the government claims it holds itself to account.
Stormont’s Health Committee, for example, is chaired by Liz Kimmins of Sinn Féin. This means that although a member of the same party as the First Minister, she acts as an opposition MLA.
That same situation caused Sinn Féin to disrupt the election of the taoiseach this week. What is “incredible arrogance” in the Dáil is normal practice in the assembly.
Meanwhile, over half a million people here are waiting on a first appointment with a medical consultant.
They all have different medical conditions, but a diagnosis of the assembly’s politics and administration reveals they are all suffering from the same illness.
It is called Stormont sickness – and the bad news is that there is unlikely to be a cure for it any time soon.