Solving the challenges facing NI’s public sector leaders begins with regaining trust

Marie Doyle is an Office Senior Partner at Deloitte in Belfast

Few will be surprised by what the public told us in the survey for Deloitte’s latest State of the State report. The NHS, social care, the cost of living and affordable housing remain at the top of people’s list of concerns when it comes to the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland.

These longstanding pressure points are not unique to Northern Ireland. Across all four UK nations surveyed, people are worried about the same core issues. But here, the impact feels sharper. As public sector budgets tighten further, the strain on health, social care, education and other frontline services is becoming impossible to ignore. Members of the public can be forgiven for taking a pessimistic outlook.

Each year, The State of the State report, delivered in partnership with independent think tank Re:State, examines attitudes to government and public services from the people who rely on them and the people who run them.

Through Deloitte’s work with the public sector, we see first-hand the scale of effort already under way to transform and modernise how services are delivered. And among the more than 40 senior public sector leaders we interviewed locally for this year’s State of the State report, there remains an unshakeable belief in the ability of the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Civil Service to deliver real improvement.

That optimism matters. But it is not yet shared by the people who rely on those services and there is work to be done to create confidence that change is possible.

We surveyed over 5,800 adults across the UK for the report and based on the answers of the more than 500 respondents from Northern Ireland, found that trust in the NI Executive remains lower than the devolved governments in Wales and Scotland. After a brief uplift in trust levels following the restoration of the Executive last year, confidence has slipped again.

Almost three quarters of respondents (74%) said they do not trust the Executive to deliver the outcomes people want, while 76% told us they don’t trust it to deliver major projects on time and on budget.

While satisfaction with local councils, schools and amenities remains net positive, satisfaction has fallen across every category since 2020. The deterioration in some categories is quite stark. Dissatisfaction with hospitals and healthcare has risen to 58%, up from just 18% five years ago. Dissatisfaction with housing now stands at 44%, compared with 24% in 2020, and the same proportion are unhappy with social and care services for vulnerable people, up from 23%.

Public sector leaders are well aware of these realities and are acutely aware of the public’s opinions. Many told us they worry that relentless criticism is dampening risk appetite and may actually be slowing the pace of reform. Yet they are equally clear in their belief that the current model of public spending in Northern Ireland is unsustainable, particularly in health and education.

Reform of the model is not optional. It is urgent. Without it, costs will continue to compound and services will deteriorate further. Leaders agree the pace of transformation must accelerate to make local services affordable, but they fear that there is little political appetite for revenue-raising measures that would require collective Executive backing.

Decisive leadership was another recurring theme in this year’s interviews with public sector leaders. Interviewees we spoke to across Stormont, the Civil Service and local public services told us that the 2027 elections have already started to loom large on the horizon, bringing with it a shorter-term focus on decision-making among Northern Ireland’s politicians.

Added to this are familiar challenges within the NICS: low morale, skills gaps, workforce planning and recruitment pressures, alongside managing public expectations about what can realistically be delivered.

There are, however, a number of reasons for cautious optimism. Leaders see genuine potential for artificial intelligence to improve and transform public services, provided it is implemented responsibly and overseen by the right expertise. The public appears open to this too – perhaps understandably ready to embrace anything that delivers better outcomes, including new technology.

My overall takeaway from this year’s State of the State is that Northern Ireland’s public sector, and the people it serves, are calling for change – even though they know it will require tough decisions and won’t be easy to achieve. They see that bold reforms could unlock enormous benefits. Public sector leaders know what needs to be done. What they now need is trust, political backing and the space to act.

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