Debate contribution: Programme for Government 2024-27

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 3 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

3 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Programme for Government 2024-27

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4825737

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I associate myself with the welcome to the Ceann Comhairle, Verona Murphy. More than 1,000 days since the election and nearly 400 days after the Executive were formed, we have the first Programme for Government since 2011. I was in my 20s then: I am in my 40s now, so that gives a sense of how long we have been waiting. For too long, our politics has been defined by either absence or improvisation. When the institutions were not collapsed, they were cobbled together and then held together by the coincidence of passing party political interest rather than the common good. For half a decade, there was no devolved government, and for none of that decade was there an agreed Programme for Government. The absence of a Programme for Government was both a symptom and a cause of dysfunctionality. In agreeing on the PFG, therefore, the Executive have made progress on the shamefully low bar that was set. When we in the SDLP entered Opposition, we were determined to be constructive. We have fulfilled that pledge to the extent that the final PFG contains slightly more clarity on certain interventions and targets. It is clear that the presence of an official Opposition has been a force for accountability. However, despite the Executive's desire to be garlanded for simply existing, you do not get a passing grade for showing up to the exam hall. The document contains aspirations that we share, but it is far short of the clear targeted plan that the people of Northern Ireland deserve after so many years of failure. In the First Minister's remarks, warm though they were, I did not hear a single clear target. On days such as this, we need to keep sight of who and what matters and of how we work to make life better for the 1·9 million people whom we serve. After the PFG fiasco last week, someone got in touch on social media to say that they had been red-flagged for referral to a consultant gynaecologist a year ago. When she phoned recently to ask how long the waiting list was, she was told that it could be years. She and the other hundreds of thousands on waiting lists are not obsessed with the mechanics of politics or process, but they deserve a clear sense of how those who sought and achieved power intend to use it to improve their lives and the services that they rely on. The programme is better than nothing. It is a modest improvement on the draft, but it is a missed opportunity. It is nowhere near good enough. I say this to the First and deputy First Minister and, indeed, to all Ministers: is this it? As I said, I acknowledge the areas in which the PFG offers more clarity in its final version than the draft. On social housing, it promises to start work on at least 5,800 new homes. That may be modest and far short of the kind of trajectory needed to deliver the 100,000 new homes promised by previous Sinn Féin Communities Ministers, but it is at least time-bound and measurable.

We also welcome the commitment to create a delivery unit. We will, of course, need to see delivery from the delivery unit.

The key theme of our approach as a constructive Opposition has been asking those with power to take responsibility rather than shift blame. On the economy, the PFG says that it prioritises low productivity but does little to address it, delaying and curtailing phase 2 of Belfast Rapid Transit (BRT) and having no plan, despite what the First Minister said, to increase investment in waste water infrastructure. On improving the quality and conditions of work, the Executive are already backsliding. Despite big talk on good jobs, the target for 2027 is simply to have considered the introduction of an employment rights Bill. On the collapsing health service, it is remarkably vague. It promises at least 250,000 assessments or diagnoses this year but then says, a few paragraphs later, that there were 260,000 last year. How will waiting lists and waiting times reduce when the number of people being seen is flatlining or even decreasing? All too often, in lieu of an actual target, the PFG promises another plan or strategy to follow at some point. For the backlog in special educational needs, they will produce a plan. Perhaps that plan will have a target. Too often, the target is not a target or even a policy or a law to be passed but a post-dated promise for a further plan at some point in the future. Too often, the document is a Russian doll of more documents and more verbiage and more plans. The PFG, for example, promises to implement the Lough Neagh action plan, but that plan was mostly not action but, rather, scoping exercises and reviews. Most frustratingly, the promises on the reform and transformation of public services have utterly lost momentum. The document completely fails to set out any clarity or ambition as to how public services are to be reformed or how the associated bodies, including the public-sector transformation board, will work. By the way, it is still an interim board. Each of the parties in the Executive sought power and now have it. Yes, they are constrained by coalition. Yes, they are limited by finances. However, those things are true of virtually every democratic government in Europe. The test of Governments is not how well they describe the problems but how they use the power that they have to improve people's lives. Sinn Féin sought and received an historic mandate to lead an Executive, but now there is precious little to show for that beyond symbolism. Having had the Finance Ministry for half a decade, it has made zero progress on devolving fiscal powers, despite constant complaints about our current funding model. The Budget section in the document is one page. I will hold it up for those who want to see it. There is one page, without a single table or chart and no clarity on whether any of the promises, such as they are, will be funded. There are no promises or pledges on fiscal powers in the PFG, despite our being told repeatedly by Finance Ministers that they want to devolve more fiscal power and that too much power was in London. It goes without saying that we have a 10-year rates review cycle that appears never to be ready to report. Critically, the document contains shockingly little on cross-border public service delivery, despite lots of words about that. When you compare it with the Southern Programme for Government, as some have done, including in this Chamber, you see that there is barely any reference to the transformative potential of greater cross-border provision; indeed, one of the most significant mentions of the Shared Island Fund comes from a DUP Minister's Department. Page 85, the prosperity section of the document, appears to put two entities that emerged from a secret DUP/Tory deal — the East-West Council and Intertrade UK — on the same footing as the North/South Ministerial Council (NSMC), the British-Irish Council (BIC) and InterTradeIreland. Those are bodies that were agreed at multiparty talks and enshrined in treaty. Just as Van Morrison is back playing the blues in Belfast, the DUP appears to be back playing its old tunes and not just in relation to international politics. It is blocking Executive papers and stalling progress on Casement Park and the Irish language. The deputy First Minister shakes her head: perhaps she can clarify that for me in her remarks later. The Alliance Party also won an historic endorsement at the last election, campaigning heavily on the need to reform Stormont and prevent repeated collapse — there is a lot of agreement between our parties; that is a vital subject — but it appears to have made absolutely no progress on getting the issue into the Programme for Government. Perhaps it made no attempt. Earning power and taking office have to mean taking responsibility and being held accountable for it. We make no apology for being a constructive but robust Opposition. Given that the First Minister's party is fighting a battle over the rights of the Opposition in the Oireachtas, she will surely agree that opposition matters. If the Irish people deserve constructive opposition on one side of the border, they deserve it on this side of the border. Our job is to speak for the people and to demand better. They have been failed too often. They deserve delivery, not empty words. They need to be confident that they can access healthcare when they need it. They need to know that their children will be supported to achieve their potential and that there will finally be some attempt to restore our degraded environment. This document does not deliver for them. It is not just a day late and a dollar short; it is a thousand days late, and there is no Budget at all. Every day, in the Chamber and outside it, the SDLP will speak for the people who have been let down for too long, even if it makes others in the Chamber uncomfortable. We will hold others to account for the power that they have sought and received. We will insist on the Executive parties taking responsibility rather than simply shifting blame. Our people deserve so much better. We will speak up for them every day and demand better than this late, limp, listless Programme for Government.

1,593 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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