Chambré Public Affairs

What you need to know The Assembly returns on Monday after an eventful summer recess that included two emergency committee meetings, one new health minister, and no Executive budget. Andy Burham, already back in the chamber at Westminster, promised to get Stormont functioning again, and talks on a sustainable funding settlement for Northern Ireland will resume again next week. Meanwhile, crunch time for legislation begins as we enter the final term of this Assembly mandate. This includes both ministerial priorities and …

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The SDLP have the wind in their sails heading into their party conference in Belfast this weekend. According to the latest figures from LucidTalk, the party is polling at 13%, their highest support in five years, up from 9% at the last election in 2022. Claire Hanna MP is the most popular party leader in the north, with an approval rating of 50%, rising to 63% among nationalists and 64% among Alliance/Green voters.  These figures reflect the party’s strong performance as the …

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Earlier this month, the Executive published its long-awaited draft Artificial Intelligence Strategy. While it recognises that AI can support economic growth and the public sector, the strategy also gives consideration to the vast risks the technology generates. As such, the strategy’s eight principles for responsible AI include human oversight; accountability and redress; data governance; technical safety and security; fairness and transparency; sustainability; societal benefit; and training and literacy.   At times, though, there exists a tension between the document’s appropriate caution about AI’s risks and its far greater confidence in AI’s potential.   The “tortoise and hare” metaphor has been regularly referenced to describe a mismatch between the slow-moving pace of legislation and policymaking …

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What you need to know Prime Minister Andy Burnham made his first visit to Northern Ireland this week, as part of his cost-of-living “listening tour”. He sought to take the constitutional question “off the table” and focus on bread-and-butter issues instead. However, with Drumcree back in the headlines and Stormont still without an agreed budget, this will be easier said than done. In this week’s blog, my colleague Dr Karli Gibson writes that the Executive’s draft AI Strategy is “another instance of …

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What you need to know Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously once said that “a week is a long time in politics” and nowhere is that seemingly truer than in Northern Ireland. This week, Robbie Butler was confirmed as Health Minister on Thursday, after Mike Nesbitt’s abrupt resignation over a dispute with UUP leader Jon Burrows on the future of emergency general surgery at Causeway Hospital. Elsewhere, the UFU is standing by its call for Minister Muir’s resignation. My colleague …

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In June 2000, during a debate over departmental funding from Westminster, a former MLA gleefully remarked that the “injustices of direct rule were over” and that, with the Assembly now in control of its own affairs, local politicians “no longer [had] to go cap-in-hand to Northern Ireland Office Ministers, as so often in the past”. Some twenty-six years on, the MLAs present in the chamber that day may lament how little has changed.  With a recent RaIse briefing paper describing the Assembly’s revenue-raising activity as ‘the lowest in the developed world’, and the …

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Between 1865 and 1895, the American frontier was a place of rapid expansion and lawlessness, forever immortalised in popular culture by the spaghetti westerns of Italian director Sergio Leone. Settlers and speculators raced into new territory faster than the law could follow, and in the gap between opportunity and regulation, vast fortunes were made. However, for every story of fortune, there were countless stories that ended in ruin. It is a history we like to think belongs to another century. …

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What you need to know This week, the frailties of the Executive were exposed as the two main parties accused each other of undermining policy development and legislative delivery and risking the stability of the political institutions. My colleague Kurtis Dickson has written about one area where legislative inaction at Stormont can be acutely felt, gambling policy, which has not been meaningfully updated since 1985 – read his analysis here. As we discussed in last week’s blog post, these difficulties have …

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Nine months out from an assembly and local election, Northern Ireland’s electorate is contemplating redrawing the political map. This week’s widely reported LucidTalk poll saw Sinn Féin (22%), the DUP (15%) and the Alliance Party (10%) all drop to five-year low levels of support at the expense of a resurgent UUP (16%) and SDLP (13%). This aligns with national trends in Great Britain, where Reform UK and the Green Party are threatening to end the Labour-Conservative duopoly. Like all polls, they are reflective of a moment in time and should be understood as a …

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What you need to know Combined DUP-SF vote falls by 5%, as UUP overtake DUP as most popular Unionist party On Monday (27 July), the Belfast Telegraph published results of a recent LucidTalk poll, which saw support for DUP and Sinn Féin fall by a collective 5 percentage points, with both parties recording their lowest level of support in five years. Support for the DUP (15%) fell by 3% since the previous poll in April, and saw the party overtaken …

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What you need to know NI parties set out priorities for new Burnham Government Stormont parties have welcomed Andy Burnham’s appointment as UK Prime Minister, and have called on him to address NI’s financial situation and ensure political stability. On Tuesday (21 July), Burnham spoke with First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly. He said said he was serious about creating “a new politics”, with deeper devolution, but added that his focus was on practical measures rather than constitutional …

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What you need to know NI Secretary does not want to step in to set Executive budget as Fiscal Council warns of bailout mentality On Wednesday (15 July), Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn MP appeared before the NI Affairs Committee. BBC NI reported that Mr Benn was hesitant to step in to set a Stormont budget, insisting it was the responsibility of the Executive and that ministers “should do their job”. On reform of the Stormont institutions, Mr Benn said there is “something …

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What you need to know ‘Progress made’ on bid to agree Stormont budget On Thursday (2 July), Executive parties met NI Secretary Hilary Benn and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby in a fresh attempt to agree a Stormont budget. Public services have been operating on contingency budgets since the start of the financial year in April, and senior officials have warned that some services will face cuts if a budget is not agreed by the end of the …

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What you need to know SDLP warn that failure to agree Budget could cut public spending by almost £1 billion On Monday (22 June), the SDLP used an opposition day motion to highlight the potential costs of the Executive’s continued failure to agree a Budget, the Belfast Telegraph reports. If a Budget has not been agreed by 1 August, departments will be unable to spend more than 95% of the previous year’s total allocation. The SDLP claims that “research based on …

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Finance Minister announces £102.6 million for transformation projects On Tuesday (26 May), Finance Minister John O’Dowd announced £102.6 million for an additional six projects to transform public services. The funding is the remaining allocation of a £235 million financial package pledged by the UK Government to restore Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions in 2024, known as the “transformation fund”. The six projects recommended by the Transformation Board include: £42m for an e-Pharmacy scheme replacing paper prescriptions; £29.2m for the Together for Families project …

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Front-line services in ‘crisis situation’ without a budget, Justice Minister warns Justice Minister Naomi Long has warned that front-line services such as policing, probation, prisons and the youth justice agency are facing a “crisis situation” due to the lack of a budget. The Executive has not been able to agree on a multi-year budget. Minister Long said the proposed draft budget published by Finance Minister John O’Dowd in January would have left the Department of Justice with a shortfall of …

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Party leaders react to local election results in GB On Saturday (10 May), The News Letter interviewed Stormont’s party leaders as they reacted to results of recent local elections in Scotland, England and Wales. Sinn Féin claimed that the results, which will return a nationalist first minister in both Scotland and Wales, demonstrated a “desire for independence [that] cannot be ignored”, with First Minister Michelle O’Neill saying that she looked forward to “continu[ing] the momentum towards constitutional change”. Deputy First Minister Emma …

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