Debate contribution: Regional Balance Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr David Honeyford on 8 September 2026.

MLA: Mr David Honeyford
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 8 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Regional Balance Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5674403

Text

I am agreeing. I understand why the accountability mechanisms are there; I totally get that. We absolutely should measure where government is delivering, but the difficulty is that we do not have a shortage of strategies and reports. What we do have is a shortage of delivery at the other end. My concern is that, five years from now, our principal achievement will be legislation that has produced excellent reports that explain the imbalance, but we will not have the actual outworking of it on the ground. We in Alliance simply want better. We want the imbalance to be removed. Fundamentally, that is where I am coming from. There is another aspect of the Bill that I strongly welcome but that needs to be taken further. Pádraig mentioned it. Clause 1(3)(e) specifically requires Departments:
"to recognise and consider cross-border economic data".
Sinéad, you have talked about this a little, but I will go in a slightly different direction. Clause 7 defines that data as:
"data concerning economic activity, labour markets, or service provisions that operate across the border".
Importantly, clause 7 recognises:
"functional areas which may cross administrative or jurisdictional boundaries".
That is absolutely right and has to be done. Economic activity does not suddenly stop at the border. If we look at south Down, Newry and Dundalk, at the north-west and Donegal, and at the economic relationships from Fermanagh to one side of Donegal and Cavan and Monaghan, we see that people cross the border for work. In my constituency of Lagan Valley last year, I dealt with three different families who work in the South, in Dublin, but moved to Lagan Valley because it was less than an hour and a half from their work. It had taken them longer to get across Dublin to their work, so they had a better standard of living, housing and everything else in my area.
Three Ministers is all the reason; sure. Businesses and supply chains trade across the border. As I have said so many times at Committee, Magee needs to be the economic driver of the north-west region, not the north-west of Northern Ireland: it needs to be at the centre of the wider region to bring economic growth. If we are serious about understanding how regional economies function, we need to look at those relationships. That brings me to clause 1(4), which requires the Executive to consult Departments, councils, business representatives, workers and the community and voluntary sectors, along with such other people as the Executive considers appropriate. We need to strengthen that provision. If clause 1 requires us to consider cross-border economic data, surely it should require us to engage with the people who are responsible for investment policy on the other side of the border.
Yes.

460 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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