A5 debacle: “likely to take years rather than months to assemble the evidence to support the scheme in anything like its current form…”

Clowntown. An ugly undercurrent surrounding this week’s court case which struck down the DoFI plans for the A5 road, was  a sense amongst some of the road’s supporters that this was a Catholic v Protestant farmer’s thing. Nah, it was incompetence.

There’s been no unionist involvement in this project since Danny Kennedy’s tenure between 2011 and 2015. Since then (and before, when Conor Murphy took the hot seat) Infrastructure has been a nationalist gig. One that doesn’t speak well for them.

After 16 years, three high court reversals, and public inquiries, all the Minister holding the portfolio (the one who green-lit the project in its current form is now [Lord help us all – Ed] at Finance) could say was “this is a very disappointing day’.

The proposed scheme’s development started under Conor Murphy in 2007, sixteen years later it’s still waiting for a start. By contrast the A4’s 13 mile stretch from the M1 to Ballygawley was commenced in 2004 under direct rule and completed by 2010.

The upgrade to the A6 is also complete, so the department has been able to do such things in the past. Both projects were begun under direct rule, whilst this was the local minister’s idea that has attracted substantial funding from the southern government.

As vacillation and delay under Nicola Mallon ate up the budget for the York Street interchange under the DUP’s confidence and supply arrangement with Theresa May, more delays on the A5 could also see money promised by the Irish government lost.

Ironically, the proposals fell because they didn’t meet conditions under changes to the Climate Change Act that the present minister’s party wholeheartedly supported. It effectively eliminated a lot of the wriggle room the project might otherwise have had.

Setting that aside, the truth is that since the A5 tenders appear to have been sent out before the Bill received Royal Assent, so that no one applying for contracts to work on the new road were asked for any sort of climate mitigations.

The legislation itself was passed as a last hurrah of the 2017-2022 mandate, so the outgoing minister Nicola Mallon did not have the opportunity to re-examine the state of the project under the new overarching climate change act.

That fell to incoming minister John O’Dowd. Which raises a key question with two parts: did the minister request a review of the project under the auspices of the new Act; or did the Permanent Secretary? If the answer to either part is no, then why not?

Last week the Speaker complained that the quality of debate in the Assembly could be reduced to an exchange of emails. Were Northern Ireland were a fully functioning democracy, the opposition would call for a vote of No Confidence in the minister.

As Sinn Fein have demonstrated over and over again in the south, the importance of such a move is not to force a resignation (under power sharing the opposition cannot make the government fall), but to create (hopefully) an orderly debate.

In that absence the minister with the portfolio is offering platitudes to a local population that needed an upgrade to the road 16 years ago, not simply for safety reasons but economic ones as well. However the judge was critical of the whole Executive:

…the construction and operation of such a major project in the absence of robust planning, synchronisation and co-ordination between all Northern Ireland government departments to ensure that the project fits into the plans, strategies and policies which map out a realistic and achievable pathway to achieving net zero by 2050, meeting the interval targets on the way and staying within the carbon budgets that have now been set. [Emphasis added]

Budgets that were set but in this case, clearly ignored. So this is also a matter for the First and deputy First Minister, the head of the civil service and ministers around the Executive table who help sign the Climate Change Act into law.

In the meantime, Wesley Johnston has told the BBC that the project in its current form will now take years to fix. Does that sound familiar? The time for political clowning is long over. No one is laughing at this direly unfunny show any longer.

Can you imagine what SF would have made of a similar cock up in Dublin? So this ought to be a field day for the opposition. We don’t need a whole system change, but if parties are going to join the Executive then they need to start walking the dots.

And if they won’t, it’s the opposition’s job to hold them accountable.

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty