Flatlining Northern Irish wellbeing is real challenge for Executive

Sarah Davidson is chief executive of Carnegie UK – a foundation that works on wellbeing public policy

Did life improve for you over the last year? Maybe you’ve got more money in the bank or a better job. Perhaps your neighbourhood has been cleaned up or feels safer. And it is possible that you found it easy to get a doctor’s appointment. No? Not you? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Carnegie’s Life in the UK Index reveals that life didn’t improve for the average citizen between 2023 and 2024.  The index – based on two surveys of over 6700 people including more than 700 in Northern Ireland – paints a picture of a society where an unacceptably high proportion of people aren’t having their basic needs met.

The people of Northern Ireland don’t buck this pan-UK trend, with our research (published yesterday) showing flatlining wellbeing scores over this year and last. But just because things aren’t changing doesn’t mean that they’re tolerable.

Our index measures wellbeing across social, economic, environmental and democratic themes. Each of the data points tells a story about what 2024 has been like for the people that have lived through it.

For example, 35 per cent of the people of Northern Ireland couldn’t meet an unexpected expense of £850 while 29 per cent can’t afford to go on holiday away from home. 21 per cent of our Northern Irish sample warn that they feel unsafe in their neighbourhood after dark, while 15 per cent are dissatisfied with the quality of their local park or other green space.

While these figures are like those seen elsewhere in the UK, there are N.I. stats that are particularly concerning. Notably, 66% of people in Northern Ireland find it difficult to get a GP appointment. This compares to 52% in England, 48% in Scotland and 49% in Wales.

We also see lower levels of democratic wellbeing in Northern Ireland, compared to the UK average, meaning that fewer people feel like they have any control over the decisions that affect their lives. 72 per cent of people in Northern Ireland feel like they cannot influence decisions affecting the UK as a whole and 55 per cent of people feel that they can’t influence local decisions.

One glimmer of hope, however, is a small uptick in trust in MLAs and the Northern Ireland Executive in the last year, reflecting the return of power-sharing arrangements to Stormont.

And with the return of devolved government, there is an opportunity now to start systematically tackling the problems outlined in our research and other papers like it.

We should not be as naïve to believe that problems resulting from ingrained inequalities and buckling public services can be solved overnight. But we must press our political and civic leaders to measure the things that matter to people and then set about putting policies in place to deliver systematic improvements.

That’s why it was impressive to see the Northern Ireland Executive commit to a new wellbeing framework alongside their programme for government. In simple terms, this is the vision, and a set of outcomes – or missions – that the Executive will prioritise over the next few years to improve the lives of people in Northern Ireland. Their data dashboard will tell us how Northern Ireland is doing and must inform both policy and debate.

Clearly you can’t feed a family or top-up an energy meter with a wellbeing framework. But if you accept that tackling many of our biggest problems – like child poverty – requires a response from more than one part of government then you need a mechanism to co-ordinate actions and measure your success (or lack of it) over time.

In our report for Northern Ireland, we go further and argue that to really catalyse the cross public-sector approach that will be crucial to moving the dial, then the Executive should deliver legislation to place new duties on public bodies. This move, we argue: “has the potential to release ambition and creativity in public services, enabling deep structural challenges to be better tackled.”

Furthermore, we make the case for an expansion of the Executive’s ‘Peace’ mission to include more citizen engagement. Like the other parts of the UK, Northern Ireland needs a bold agenda to re-engage people in democracy and rebuild trust in elected representatives.

The state of wellbeing in Northern Ireland is poor and not improving. But elements of the current Executive’s agenda suggest that there are at least some decision-makers prepared to change that.

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