Debate contribution: Executive Progress

Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on 19 January 2026.

MLA

Dr Steve Aiken OBE

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

19 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Executive Progress

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5322064

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Executive progress has, by anybody's definition, been marked. It is clear that there are challenges with government delivery. Over the decade that I have been in politics, the habit of government has been diluted by the years during which the Executive were brought down by Sinn Féin and the DUP. The need to deliver, over the desire to show that we just exist, has been largely forgotten. We have a status quo government machine that is very resistant to change and accountability. One has only to look at the stovepiping to realise how difficult it is to make government work. External reports on COVID and the renewable heat incentive (RHI) show clearly that the machinery of government, particularly the Civil Service at the highest levels, does not deliver for the people of Northern Ireland. There is a significant executive problem with how we deliver services for Northern Ireland. We have a Budget of £60-odd billion over the next three years, with an additional year for capital. That is a hugely significant amount of public resource. It is clear that the ways do not necessarily meet the means, but we need to look at what we can do over that three-year period to achieve sufficient efficiencies in the delivery of public services. Last year, the Department of Health — Mike Nesbitt worked closely with John O'Dowd on this — managed to achieve efficiencies of about 3·5%, which was close to £300 million. If we were to achieve efficiencies of 3·5% across the entire Executive Budget, that would lead to savings of close to three quarters of a billion pounds over the next budgetary period, and those savings could then go towards public services. You cannot tell me that we cannot achieve efficiencies of less than 5% in a public service environment. In a sense, Northern Ireland is a large corporation, and the bit of it for which we are responsible costs somewhere in the region of £20 billion a year to run. Can you imagine if those responsible for running a similar-sized corporation could not achieve such efficiencies? The board and its chair would be sacked. In our case, the co-chairs would be sacked. We therefore need to do much better when it comes to looking at achieving efficiencies and managing money. We hear a lot about what is going wrong with government. We talk a lot about the Department of Health's budget accounting for approximately half of the budgetary push, yet things do not seem to be changing. Things are changing, however. We are putting reforms in place. We know that our waiting lists are far too long, but we have seen significant reductions in long-term waiting lists: the waiting list for colonoscopies is down by 63%; the waiting list for common procedures is down by 70%; and the waiting lists for procedures such as hernia operations and hip and knee replacements are down by 90%. I still, however, appreciate the fact that waiting lists are far too long. We need to be able to fix them. The Executive have rightly made health their number-one priority. As we come back here over the next couple of years, I ask that it remain the number-one commitment. I started by saying that our biggest problems are structural as well as budgetary. We need to work out how we boost our prosperity. One of the easiest ways in which to do that would probably not cost very much money, and it is to reform the planning system so that it works, meaning that we do not have to wait years to get things built. We should be able to do that. We also need to look at how we use financial transactions capital (FTC). The biggest blockage to our prosperity at the moment is the fact that we cannot build for our economy because we do not have waste water infrastructure that is up to spec. We should prioritise our FTC, which, according to the Finance Minister, we do not have to pay back — I do not quite know how that works — in order to sort out our water system. We have an opportunity here. Let us not be negative about it. Let us grasp the opportunities and go for it.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:13 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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