Debate contribution: Tackling the Financial and Societal Impacts of Division

Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on 25 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Eóin Tennyson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

25 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Tackling the Financial and Societal Impacts of Division

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4866476

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Over the course of my lifetime, Northern Ireland has been on a journey towards becoming a more progressive, inclusive and united place. However, despite the enormous strides forward that we have taken together, young people today still grow up in a community where children are, largely, educated apart; 90% of social housing remains segregated; peace walls divide communities; and paramilitary organisations continue to exert a toxic influence. This is a society where, for too many, community background still dictates where you go to school, what street you live on, the football teams that you can support, the sports that you can play, the services that you access and what your political views should be. Not only is that anathema to the vision of the truly shared future that the people of Northern Ireland signed up to in 1998 but it comes at a huge financial cost. A 2016 study by the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre (UUEPC) estimated that the cost of division could be up to £833 million a year. More recently, the Executive's Programme for Government placed the annual cost of paramilitary harm alone at £750 million. Those costs manifest themselves in a number of ways: the duplication of services, as seen in our education system and in community and leisure provision and elsewhere; increased policing and justice costs, including for our prisons; and opportunity costs in respect of foregone investment in tourism and other investments. Whilst assessing those costs is difficult — allow me to be the first in the debate to acknowledge that addressing them is even harder — doing nothing is simply not an option. Rather than squandering hundreds of millions of pounds on division, we ought to be investing in our health service, in housing and in tackling the cost of living. Just imagine the difference that even some of that £800 million could make. It could, for example, fund the first year of the Department of Health's plan to tackle waiting lists or a year of PSNI recruitment. It could make a significant difference to our mental health strategy and Lough Neagh action plan, and it could enhance community-based funding to tackle violence against women and girls. Whilst that is not a comprehensive list of Alliance's ambitions for Northern Ireland and we recognise, of course, that generating savings from reducing division will not happen overnight, it still illustrates the transformational potential of tackling the cost of division and the incredible range of programmes and services that could be funded were we not spending money in that way. Tolerating the cost of division is morally and economically indefensible at any time but is particularly scandalous at a time when Departments are under enormous financial strain, with departmental bids for the 2025-26 draft Budget far outweighing the funding available for allocation. That is why Alliance is calling on the Department of Finance to commission an independent assessment of the cost of division in 2025 in order to give us a more contemporary understanding of the challenges and bring the 2016 Ulster University report and the 2007 Deloitte study up to date.

That work is pertinent at a time when Professor Holtham has been tasked with assessing relative need and the unique factors that affect Northern Ireland, because, whilst many of the costs associated with division in our society can and should be addressed by Departments, others may be genuinely unavoidable, given our past, and require attention from Treasury.

We also need a mechanism by which to hold Departments to account. Too often, the hard graft of reconciliation and peacebuilding is ignored or, worse, actively frustrated by Ministers. A good example of that is the fact that the Department of Education faces a judicial review in respect of decisions that it took on integrated education. Including a requirement to have due regard to the cost of division within the statutory remit of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council is one such way of holding Ministers to account on those issues. There will be a key opportunity to do so in this mandate when the Fiscal Council Bill comes before the Assembly. I have to say that it is disappointing that the previous Sinn Féin Finance Minister ruled out any such requirement. It is even more disappointing that the cost of division appears to have been absent from any conversation about public transformation and the Executive's Budget sustainability plan. I would welcome the Minister's views on any progress in that space in his response to the debate. There is also a role for the Executive Office in developing a shared future framework, which the Assembly has already debated, through which every Executive policy should be viewed. That is why Alliance has continuously argued that peacebuilding should be a core pillar of the Programme for Government. Of course, since the previous assessment of the cost of division in 2016, we have dealt with two collapses of the Executive and a global pandemic. I think that we would all recognise that progress on tackling some of the issues raised in that report has been slower than any of us would have liked. However, we have a crucial opportunity now, away from collapse and crisis, to move beyond simply managing division as an Executive and towards a future where we finally break down and overcome division once and for all. We have the opportunity to build a future where our children thrive from being educated together; where we fund services, not division; and where everyone, no matter their background, can reach their full potential. I ask all Members to unite behind the motion and grasp the opportunity to start taking steps towards a more united community. I commend the motion to the Assembly.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:08 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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