All languages are the same age…

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh just a couple of days ahead of time in one of those rarities – a leap year with St Patrick’s Day on a Sunday.

Of course, St Patrick himself would not have been a native Gaeilgeoir, although he would of course have come to speak the language (most likely with an hint of an East Ulster accent). In fact, he would have arrived in Ireland where the Irish language was long established, having come perhaps from England where the English language was at the time completely unknown.

Names

In fact, language names are a funny thing because the above sentence would not really work in Irish itself; what in the English language is referred to as “Irish” is referred to in Irish as Gaeilge (literally ‘Gaelic’), whereas the adjective for ‘of Ireland’ is Éireann. Similarly, ‘England’ in Irish is Sasana but ‘English’ (as in the language) is Béarla.

Languages travel

This is in fact more accurate than in English; the island of Ireland has taken roughly its current form for as long as human habitation has existed on it (almost 10,000 years); yet Gaeilge has existed on the island for “only” a little over a quarter of that period. During the preceding millennia it had made its way across Europe, likely dipping south and one stage (which still likely part of a single Proto-Celtic language and perhaps even as a single Proto-Italo-Celtic language) before heading northwest, ultimately from what is now Eastern Ukraine. It arrived in Ireland about half its lifetime ago (if we define that as its existence as a separate language from the original Proto-Indo-European) and of course it kept going, to Scotland and the Isle of Man.

A little over a millennium after “Irish” arrived in “Ireland”, “English” arrived in “England”; it is worth emphasising that the language was named first. Various Germanic tribes headed across the North Sea from what is now northern Germany and southern Denmark, the most prominent among them being the Angles and the Saxons. Interestingly, the Saxons may have been more numerous in total, but the number travelling constituted a lower share of all Saxons than the number of Angles travelling (it is thought almost all Angles travelled). For whatever reason, the pure numbers determined that “Saxons” would give their name to Sasana directly (i.e. the land was named for the tribe). In their own language, however, the fact that almost all “Angles” travelled meant that the language spoken in the new location of eastern Britain came to be known as “Angle-ish” or “English”; ultimately, in English itself, the name of the kingdom followed the name of the language (i.e. there was an “English” language before there was an “England”). Curiously, Béarla derives from an older term simply meaning ‘speech’ (but, at least implicitly, ‘foreign speech’).

Ireland

This all means, of course, that “Irish” has spent about half its lifetime in “Ireland”, but people in Ireland spoke different languages for almost three quarters of humanity’s existence on the island.

Interestingly, if you define “lifetime” a little differently, it could be argued that “English” has spent roughly half its lifetime in Ireland too (having arrived in the 12th century, albeit as a minor sideshow given that government in England at the time took place in Norman French), taking as the starting date its departure from Continental Europe. Given that length of time in each case, it is small wonder that so many regret the decline of “Irish”, but also that so many of the most prominent exponents of literary “English” have in fact been “Irish” (although it is subjective, this must surely be a number disproportionate to population, particularly if we include contributions not just to writing but also to cinema and popular music).

Of course, there are other linguistic curiosities in Ireland. It is probably that some unexplained aspects of place names date from before even Irish (Gaelic); there has also been influence from other languages, most obviously Scots in the north but many others. It is not infrequent across the island now for more than 20 languages to be spoken in a single school. (However, it does need to be emphasised that this should not discount from the particular requirement to maintain Irish; Polish, Tagalog or Portuguese will manage just fine regardless of how they develop in Ireland, whereas Irish needs promotion in Ireland itself or its very survival is at risk.)

“Old” languages

We do need to take particular care of Irish, for reasons noted above, but we also need to be clear about one thing: all languages are actually the same age!

Irish does hold a notable distinction of having extant writing existing before any Germanic language (including English); this does not make it “older”, just “attested earlier” – even though it may be noted that this is of significant value to historical linguists, particularly in their reconstruction of the very Proto-Indo-European language from which Irish, English and indeed languages spoken natively by almost half the world’s population (from Spanish to Hindi) all derive.

English is in fact the “earliest attested” extant Germanic language (though we do have quite a number of texts in Gothic, a now extinct Germanic language, from centuries before this), but again this does not make it the “oldest”. It is perhaps apt that one of the best known translations of the Old English epic poem Beowulf was by the late Seamus Heaney, an Irishman also well acquainted with the Irish language!

Ultimately, however, all languages are the same age. They pre-date even Proto-Indo-European (spoken roughly between 6500 and 4500 years ago), of course – that too must have derived from a different language perhaps influenced by other different languages (though it is extremely unlikely that they bore any relation to the one spoken in Ireland at the time).

Ultimately every sentence we utter is an echo of the distant past. If we speak and Indo-European language like Irish or English, it is in fact an echo of a common distant past. Maybe that is a thought for St Patrick’s Day?!

Airports in UK/Ireland widely misunderstood

It is some time now since I worked in aviation PR, though I much enjoyed it and maintained a keen interest in it. Aviation is also one of those industries which is felt to be widely understood by the public (many of whom use it or are affected by it), but which is perhaps quite different on the inside.

For example, if you ask almost anyone in Northern Ireland whether they prefer “Belfast International” (Aldergrove) or “Belfast City” (Sydenham) Airport, the latter will come out on top – it is more convenient, easier to get through, accessible by train and so on. Yet, in terms of users, the former is far more popular and the gap is increasing markedly; in 2013, barely 60% of passengers passing through a Belfast airport passed through “International”, but in 2022 that had risen to almost 75%.

Ireland

Passenger numbers at Dublin Airport had risen to 23.5m per annum before the Great Recession from 2008, when they fell back in two years to 18.4m and then gradually rose back to close to 33m in 2019 (actually above the 32m “cap” applied by Fingal Council); in 2022 they had recovered relatively strongly after the pandemic to 27.8m and the Airport is now applying to raise the cap to 40m.

In a distant second place on the island is Belfast International, which also fell back from 5.3m in 2008 to barely 4m in 2010, but then recovered slightly more slowly over the decade before hitting close to 6.3m in 2019; the recovery from the pandemic has been slower – in 2022 passenger numbers were still below 2008 levels, at just over 4.8m.

Over the past 15 years or so, three airports have challenged for third place on the island as a whole – Cork, Shannon and Belfast City. Shannon, near Limerick, took third place in 2009 with 2.8m passengers but then dipped sharply, barely recovering during the 2010s to 1.7m in 2019 and now recovering post-pandemic to a still lower 1.5m last year. Belfast City moved into third place in 2010 and for most of the subsequent decade, but it was overtaken by Cork (with both airports around 2.5m) in 2019 and fell well behind after the pandemic in 2022 (at 1.7m versus 2.2m for Cork).

The gaps and the trend are obvious. Dublin is by far the biggest passenger airport on the island, with passenger numbers at around five to six times the level of Belfast International and a little over four times both Belfast airports combined. Belfast International, in turn, is clearly second – within the past decade it was beginning to look conceivable that City would overtake it as Northern Ireland’s main passenger airport, but now International handles almost three times as many passengers as City. Instead, Belfast City has fallen back and Cork has emerged in third place on the island ahead of it, with Shannon now a clear fifth – this order is likely to be retained for some years.

UK-wide

Belfast International is a competitive domestic airport by UK regional standards; as noted above, it handled 6.3m passengers in 2019 and 4.8m in 2022. This left it in tenth place in the UK last year, though it was the smallest gain since the end of the pandemic (2023 figures will tell a tale): Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds-Bradford and Newcastle demonstrate similar passenger numbers in the 3.5-6m bracket and London City and East Midlands are a little behind at around 2.5-3m. Edinburgh, Birmingham, London-Luton and now Bristol (which has grown quickly over the past decade or so) now handle rather more passengers each year at 8-13m, and then there are the UK’s “big four” which are well clear (London-Heathrow retains a clear lead at 61m in 2022, ahead of London-Gatwick at 33m, and then Manchester and London-Stansted both at just over 23m; this makes Dublin at 28m the third biggest by passenger numbers in the UK and Ireland).

At under 2m passengers in 2022 (having been just over pre-pandemic), Belfast City falls essentially two brackets below International, placing 17th in the UK last year with similar numbers to Aberdeen (and actually also Jersey in the Channel Islands), markedly ahead of Doncaster-Sheffield, Cardiff and Bournemouth (which fall a little below the 1m mark). For the record, Derry is in 32nd place, with 163,000 passengers, similar to Teesside (which has declined rapidly over the past decade or so) or Kirkwall.

UK as an oddity

The United Kingdom is extremely unusual in having private airports; even in the United States, airports tend to be publicly owned. This means, for good or ill, that airports in the UK are essentially businesses, and are relatively untouched by politics.

Airports are very odd places, in fact. They are, for example, exempt from alcohol licensing laws and in certain instances from duties, and this contributes significantly to their profits.

They are also hugely dependent on airlines, whose owners really call the shots: in Europe, Ryanair is the most noteworthy of the airlines to have come to dominate airport slots and thus airport politics; in countries with publicly owned airports, spokespeople for companies such as Ryanair become significant political actors, often appearing in their own right on what are ostensibly political interviews or talk shows.

Airports may often depend significantly on cargo; in Northern Ireland, this is where Belfast International has a huge advantage because it handles almost all goods arriving or departing by air.

Airports are also one of the many areas of public debate where the debate goes one way but public sentiment quietly goes another. There is, understandably, significant concern about their impact on the environment and on noise in residential areas; yet passenger numbers (outside pandemics and consequent economic downturns) continue to rise. A little like Premier League football clubs or even political parties, to an extent airports can get away with being poorly managed because, fundamentally, to most people they are essentially functional warehouses to be used for getting away on business or on holiday. I would put forward the view that UK airports are particularly shabby in comparison with those in most comparable countries, in large part because they are designed first and foremost to serve shareholders not passengers; conversely, in terms of their attractiveness to airlines, they may fare slightly better (because there is the motivation to get that particular aspect of the business right in order to maximise profit), although the connections delivered will obvious tend more towards leisure than business travel.

There is also the peculiarity of the “middle man” – you fly on an airline and you wait in an airport, but the transit bit between the two is usually carried out by a third party contractor (most often, in the UK and Ireland, Swissport UK&I). If you have been waiting inside a plane (or outside in the car park for someone who is on a plane) while either steps or baggage or both have failed to appear, the prime responsibility for that lay with the “middle man”. In fact, my own worst experience of languishing on a long-landed aircraft as a passenger was upon arrival in Dublin rather than Belfast, but the lack of serious competition for ground services and baggage handling anywhere in the UK & Ireland can become frustratingly evident.

This has become emphasised after Covid, because the Pandemic left Swissport worldwide over $2b in debt. It had to lay off staff and abandon its expansion strategy which it had pursued aggressively since 2005 (initially expanding the number of airports served, more recently the services offered). It has stuttered ever since – and passengers waiting to disembark or collect baggage (and those waiting for them) have irritatingly often paid the penalty. This problem has no real solution, however, as any potential competitors suffered similarly.

Travel

A lot of public debate surrounds travelling to and from airports. This too is a peculiarity; for all the apparently big number of passengers noted above, in fact airports are comparatively quiet places (particularly during the day away from peak hours) and they are by definition usually set away from residential or commercial locations, meaning that they serve as a single-purpose destination (unlike, say, a city centre or even a shopping centre which may combine commercial opportunities, shops, meeting places and leisure options all in one place). In fact, many of the airports serving over 10m passengers a year (or sometimes even fewer) attain those numbers with a significant degree of transit (i.e. passengers who land at and take off from the airport but never actually leave it otherwise). A good example of this is Keflavik Airport in tiny Iceland (whose population is roughly the same as Belfast City Council’s), which is often quoted as an example of a smaller place being able to serve roughly the same number of passengers as Belfast International; however, it has a much higher proportion in transit and this is in itself not necessarily a good thing (as you need to find ways to get those transiting passengers spending during their brief stay in the airport to make their presence worthwhile, such as by transporting them to a nearby lagoon…).

Within the UK, given its private airports, it is in any case arguably in an airport’s interests to make it accessible primarily by car, and then add in parking fees even for the drop-off zone. Nevertheless, the fact is that rail links, often campaigned for, are rarely financially viable because they fall into a vicious circle of needing to be regular enough to attract passengers to use them but also being unable to be regular enough to do that without becoming financially unviable because the trains themselves would be largely empty if you did. If you can build up around an airport to attract people to a rail route towards it even without having to go to the airport itself you may stand some chance, but as noted above few people even want to work (far less live) in immediate proximity to a regularly used flightpath.

For this reason, even airports in the UK such as Bristol and London-Luton, with notably more passengers than either Belfast Airport, lack direct rail links and there are no imminent plans to “fix” this (as it is not really a problem). Of course, Dublin also lacks a rail link (though plans for one by 2035 do exist), though it should be noted that a far higher proportion of its passengers are transit than at either Belfast Airport (or, for that matter, Cork), which means the numbers of people actually entering or leaving the airport are not quite as high as would be suggested by the passenger numbers alone. In fact, creating such links can prove financially disastrous – the tram link to Edinburgh Airport became such a mess that the Inquiry into it alone cost £14m!

Summary

The peculiarity of airports, particularly in the UK, is that they are seen as huge public services when in fact they are relatively small businesses (particularly when you consider that much of the flight experience is in fact managed by an airline or a ground handler, not by the airport itself). They support a lot of jobs and productivity but do not directly provide it – perhaps as many as 25 jobs will be supported by airports for every one directly employed by them.

There is also a sense that they are much more major destinations in themselves (particularly for those of us living on detached islands) than they actually are; but perhaps also that they are solely about travel than about economic impact.

Most notable of all is how the motivations of all concerned with airports – the owners, the managers, the users and nearby residents – are so poorly understood in public debate.

I dare say it is exactly all these peculiarities which led me to enjoy my time working in aviation PR so much!

Beware political predictions

Political predictions are almost always wrong. As human beings, we have a psychological desire to know what is going to happen ahead of time, particularly at elections, and even more so at US Presidential Elections like the one taking place almost exactly a year from now. However, we do not actually know what will happen – no one does.

US Presidential Elections are, of course, decided by the Electoral College, itself elected by the people from the states; in each state bar two, the winning candidate received all the nominees to the Electoral College. Each state is assigned a certain number of congressmen according to population at the last census and two senators (regardless of size); they Electoral College allocation is a combination of these two, meaning smaller states are slightly overrepresented. Additionally, the District of Columbia, which has no voting representation in congress, elects three “Electors” (members of the Electoral College).

Key states last time were Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin which Biden won without an overall majority of the vote; Trump won only North Carolina similarly; Biden also won Nevada with a very narrow overall majority. Of these, a recent poll showed Biden ahead only in Wisconsin, with Trump leading in the others and thus currently heading back to the White House. Of course, a lot can change in a year – and it was only a poll.

The map above is as if designed for British viewers, with Biden’s strength apparently in red (the traditional colour of the left in Britain) and Trump’s apparently in blue (in the US, these colours now tend to be reversed with blue for Democrat and red for Republican). We can see on the map wafer-thin majorities in places like Nevada, now just shading blue, alongside big advantages in the American South and in the New England states exactly as we would expect them given Trump’s advantage in the former and Biden’s lead in the latter in 2020 (following a long electoral trend). That map could be as good a predictor as any of what is to come.

The thing is, that map above is not a political map. It is in fact map of states where there are more domestic cats than dogs (red) and more dogs than cats (blue), courtesy of Terrible Maps.

But still, I stand by the fact that it could be as good a predictor as any. No one knows how to predict elections. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise…

Lack of “Health Economics” key to NI’s failings

I have written before on these pages that the solutions to any complex problem are never simple. One of the great difficulties of democracy in our era is the insistence that they are.

I have also written before about an obvious example of this, namely Northern Ireland’s Health Service.

Unfortunately, the crisis is such that even the media are well behind on it. They reported two weeks ago, for example, that a particular service had been withdrawn. However, any service with a waiting time measured in years has, in effect, been withdrawn. Nobody can, or should, wait that long for

Such a strategy would need to be wide-ranging, naturally drawing on experiences from elsewhere. One of the most notable strategies to tackle drug addiction was the sweeping reform in Portugal from 2001, which included limited decriminalisation and so-called ‘dissuasion commissions’. It may be noted that other proposals, such as ‘substance misuse courts’, have demonstrated rather less benefit. There is no question, however, that a core and beneficial component of the Portuguese response, and also the more successful responses in the United States and Canada, has been the introduction of so-called ‘safe injecting’ or (more commonly on this side of the Atlantic) ‘drug consumption’ rooms.

So, although we cannot turn a blind eye to others issues which impact on drug abuse in Northern Ireland, we can be relatively sure based on the evidence from elsewhere that ‘drug consumption rooms’ will be part of the mix. In parts of Europe and North America they have already proven effective in reducing the rates of addiction, the scale of harm caused, and then in enabling people to get on the path to rehabilitation.

Fundamentally, as with any such interventions, we need to be moving swiftly towards tacking the root causes of drug addiction and abuse. We also need to be doing more to tackle the problem at source, by stopping producers and traffickers. However, for those who are already dependent, we also need to be taking action. We need to be using devolved government to deliver new, more effective, evidence-based policies and plans which will tackle addiction and help people at most risk.

Absolute Irish Sea border a non-starter

It is absolutely clear that an absolute border – complete with customs checks – within the island of Ireland is a non-starter. It is a non-starter practically, for the simple reason that it is easier to carry out checks at limited locations where vehicles are already stopped (i.e. ports) than at multiple locations on free-flowing roads. It is also a non-starter politically, because the Agreement is premised on the ability to live all-island lives if we so choose. Whether they particularly like it or not, most practical people immediately understand the former point, and non-Unionists immediately grasp the latter too.

It is odd, therefore, that Irish Nationalists who will immediately point out, justifiably, that a land border on the island of Ireland is a non-starter also then appear to believe that a United Ireland should be sold as the “fastest way back into the EU”. The practical outcome of that would be an absolute, hard Irish Sea Border between in-EU Ireland and ex-EU Great Britain. To be clear, there is no negotiation about this – that is the simple, practical reality of what happens if you move to a United Ireland inside the EU tomorrow.

The problems with such a border do not bear thinking about. It is a non-starter practically not because of geographical realities but rather because of economic ones – by any reasonable measurement, Northern Ireland does more than three times more trade with Great Britain (in both directions) than it does with the whole of the EU; this was demonstrated by the Windsor Framework which, for example, recognised that simply shifting the supply of medicines into Northern Ireland was not practical, but it goes well beyond this – entire industries in Northern Ireland (e.g. quarrying) rely on customers in Great Britain. It is also, of course, a political non-starter – many people in Northern Ireland value their connections with Great Britain and perfectly legitimately regard it as (part of) home; suddenly turning it into a completely foreign country is clearly well beyond the spirit of the Agreement – the very same Agreement legitimately quoted in favour of keeping the land border within the island of Ireland friction-free.

The idea, therefore, that you could simply transfer Northern Ireland from the ex-EU United Kingdom into an in-EU United Ireland is a non-starter. It would not work economically as it would crush much of what remains of an already vulnerable private sector in the north east, and politically it would fall every bit as far outside the terms of the Agreement as any land border would currently.

The fact that the “conversation” around “unity” has not even begun to grasp this shows that it isn’t really happening. Beyond this, there is the practical nonsense of taking territory out of NATO in the context of the Ukraine War and of taking the British population on the island out of the Commonwealth; the first is not remotely viable geopolitically, and the second is not remotely viable if we are serious about reconciliation.

This brings us to the real point of course – we are not serious about reconciliation. Jarlath Kearney recently warned about people seeking victory (or, as he put it quoting the late Inez McCormick, seeking an outcome whereby it is “our turn now”). On one side we have Unionists seriously trying to argue that full customs checks on the land border are viable (that is the inevitable consequence of their position, even if they deny it); but on the other we have Nationalists assuming that an absolute Irish Sea border is viable (which is again the inevitable consequence of their position, even if they deny it).

The fact is Northern Ireland only works when we get serious about reconciliation, when we are respectful and generous of others’ identities and experiences, and when there is minimal friction in all directions. The fact is that neither Unionists nor Nationalists are offering that. That may be one reason that people are increasingly turn away from either of them…

Department honest about roads projects

If there is one advantage to Northern Ireland’s current status as bureaucracy rather than democracy, it is that occasionally there can be a bit of honesty about priorities (whereas Ministers never like to accept they are deprioritising anything, for obvious reasons). A fortnight ago, we saw this time of honesty concerning roads projects.

Other than the now essentially complete A6 upgrades between Randalstown-Castledawson and Dungiven-Drumahoe, the following are listed as priority (in one way or another):

• A1 junctions upgrade (Hillsborough-Banbridge)
• A2 relief road (south of Newry)
• A4 bypass (south of Enniskillen)
• A5 expressway (Newbuildings-Aughnacloy)
• A6 bypass (Drumahoe-Maydown)
• A12 interchange upgrade (York Street)
• A29 bypass (east of Cookstown)
• A32 improvements (Omagh-Enniskillen)
• BRT2 north-south Glider
• Lagan Pedestrian/Cycle bridge

It should be noted that even the A32 improvements are partial (other proposed improvements on the same route appear to have been deprioritised) and the reference to the York Street Interchange suggests limited progress is likely.

This leaves a range of omissions (or deprioritisations), perhaps the most notable being the proposed A24 bypass of Ballynahinch. All the others noted for no work currently were long-term anyway, though they include the long proposed A2 Sydenham Bypass upgrade (a project which was supposedly fundamental to full access to Titanic Quarter but which surely now needs to be redesigned); I have written before about how a failure at least to remove the Dee Street lights on this stretch also render the whole York Street Interchange project less beneficial, so it is surely now also in doubt.

Politically, it is dubious that any Minister would overtly have presented such a list – perhaps this is a problem with the way politics is at the moment. However, it is also unlikely that any Minister would significantly dispute this list privately. I myself would probably have gone further, removing the A6 Drumahoe-Maydown project as it is stalled anyway because of an illegal dump on the route and because the cost has now become truly eye-watering. Officials will not have wanted to do this as it is part of a theoretically ongoing project; however, Northern Ireland’s road network is littered with theoretically ongoing projects!

The maintenance of the A29 Cookstown bypass on the list is significant because the A29/A31 route provides another north/south spine and Cookstown (particularly on market day) is a notable hold-up to it. However, to the south there is still no easy connection to the M1/A4 expressway around Dungannon and no specific proposal for one; were a Cookstown bypass to be completed, it is likely this would become an even more obvious issue. A bypass connection from around Carland north of Dungannon to M1/J14 would surely be a contender for an important new route, connecting Mid Ulster to Armagh and on to the south and west Belfast area in a similar way to the A31 Magherafelt bypass to the north.

The A2 Newry Relief Road would probably come in as the most expensive per mile on the list, which means it may too fall into a discussion around cross-border funding (like the A5). It is also important that this is not done “on the cheap” as currently planned; Northern Ireland’s road network is also littered with projects done on the cheap only then to be subsequently redone, not least Newry’s own A1 bypass!

It is good to see that “road projects” now include active travel and public transport projects too. There is an issue with BRT2, however: to work, it really needs to operate along Royal Avenue, but there is pressure to disallow all vehicles from that location. Doing so would likely lead to too much difficult circuiting the area for the project to be viable (both in terms of likely user numbers and in terms of buses backing up and thus arriving at greater gaps, rendering the whole system much less user-friendly). Furthermore, lessons will need to be learned to ensure Glider really does have priority at junctions; from Lanyon Place, a train will get you all the way to Carrickfergus faster than the Glider will get you to Stormont – that is really not supposed to happen.

For all that, it is important not to discount the necessity of some key roads improvement projects. A phrase used on the radio earlier this month is very helpful to this: “We have to think about how we move people about, not cars”. That is very well put – the answer to moving people about, particularly in urban areas, will often involve public transport and active travel; but there are areas where cars and coaches will still be the inevitable solution – Denmark, where only 20% of commutes into the capital city are made by car and where private vehicle taxes are extremely high by any standards, still actually has the same car ownership per head as Ireland. Mixing the freedom of the car with the sense of public transport and active travel is what is meant by truly multi-modal travel.

The problem with NI’s “giveaways”

This post is designed as a simple explainer of the problems which now come with “super-parity” – essentially areas in Northern Ireland where public services are provided free where they are not in England, or where something is paid for out of public revenue where it is not in England.

Areas affected

The Fiscal Council lists some of the key areas of “super-parity” as being:

• Water charges (charged separately in England but paid for purely out of rates revenue in NI) at £345m/year;
• Tuition fees (charged at under £4,000/year in NI but over £9,000/year in England) at £91m/year;
• Industrial derating (applying in NI but not in England) at £61m/year;
• Welfare mitigations (applying in NI but not in England) at £43m/year;
• Vacant land (to which rates relief applies in NI but not in England) at £35m/year;
• Domiciliary care (still provided free in NI) at £33m/year;
• Concessionary fares (applying from 60 and including peak hours, rather than 65 without in much of England) at £29m/year; and
• Prescription charges (free in NI but charged in some circumstances in England, albeit typically at a flat, subsidised rate) at £20m/year.

There are others (even air passenger duty at £2m/year) and the average rates bill effectively means domestic taxes are also notably lower in Northern Ireland than in England; however, there is also one area of “sub-parity” (i.e. where England gets something NI does not), namely full-time childcare provision.

Barnett Formula

The UK is unusual in that political powers are devolved but tax-raising generally is not. Instead, the UK Treasury allocates funding from a baseline in the mid-1970s.

Barnett Consequentials

From there, any rise (or, for that matter, fall) in “regionally identifiable spending” in England has to be matched by a similar allocation per head of population to the other countries: the formula is £3.45 total uplift in Northern Ireland for every £100 uplift in England (this uplift being based on population).

Barnett squeeze

Inherent to this is the so-called “Barnett squeeze”: the Barnett Formula was advantageous to Northern Ireland as it took a 1970s baseline (when Northern Ireland was comparatively in much greater need) but Consequentials work out about even (based on population) creating a net squeeze as the per-head advantage in total funding allocation in Northern Ireland declines. The gap will never close completely, but it inevitably becomes smaller over time as the Formula baseline has less effect and Consequentials have more.

Agreement

Around the time of the Agreement, per-head public spending in Northern Ireland was roughly 40% above that in England (exact figures depend on a lot of issues, but this is a reasonable starting point).

At this stage, had it been assessed on need (the way a Commission recently did for Wales), the gap would have been 20-25%, giving Northern Ireland something of an advantage. As a result, early Executive Ministers felt free to engage in many of the “super-parity” policies which would inevitably prove popular – there were no additional water charges above rates, tuition fees stayed lower, industrial derating was maintained, concessionary fares in excess of those elsewhere were brought in, and free prescription charges were introduced. Crudely, at the time, Northern Ireland’s public finances could sustain this, maintaining public spending in line with need comparative to the rest of the UK with these additional advantages built in.

Pandemic

After a “Fresh Start” the pandemic hit, which required a rapid uplift in public spending, much of it regionally identifiable (to health, education, business support or whatever). This, however, had the effect of speeding up the squeeze – coming out of the pandemic, public spending is now barely 20% higher per head in Northern Ireland, almost exactly what most experts would regard as necessary based on need.

The problem is twofold: firstly, the squeeze will continue to apply, meaning per-head spending in Northern Ireland will decrease below that required based on need, comparative to England; and secondly, even as it is, to achieve the same level of public service on the same level of public spending would (all other things being equal) assume spending and revenue occurred in roughly the same way.

Put more simply, all other things being equal, Northern Ireland cannot sustain the same level of public service on the same level of public spending if does not engage in the same level of public service reform and if it continues to fund “super-parity” items which were always actually optional extras (hence the crude but not entirely inaccurate term “giveaways”).

Choices

Ultimately, we all know that elected office comes as a burden, not just an opportunity. It comes with choices, but they will not all be popular.

This is not a view on what choices should be made; but it is a view that we need to be clear they will need to be made. First, we need to decide who is going to make them and on the basis of what mandate.

How to *think* through public policy challenges

With apologies to one correspondent, I am about to make a point I have made before on this blog. Let us take a diversion first, however.

You go into a toy shop and you see a car and a pennant you would like to buy for a relative. Together, they cost £11. The car costs £10 more than the pennant. How much does the pennant cost?

Our intuition gives us an immediate answer to that straightforward question; an immediate answer, but the wrong one.

You’ve got it now…

Fundamentally, we humans don’t like to expend too much time thinking. It is tiring, literally. So we spend most of our time going with the flow. Never more so than when someone points out how daft it is there isn’t a railway link to Belfast International Airport.

Sure, there’s even a railway that goes straight past it!

But think again. Remember, it wasn’t £1…

This very morning there is a flight from Belfast International to London Gatwick at 7.55am – the classic “red eye” popular for business and pleasure alike. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a rail link?

Well. Remember, it was 50p…

Let’s say I want to make that flight from Jordanstown. We’ll work it backwards. I need to get there, really, for a little before 6.30. At that time in the morning, I can do that by car – either my own or, better still, via a lift – leaving at 6am.

To get there via a train via Antrim would take just over half an hour – but from Lanyon Place, east of Belfast City Centre. I would need, therefore, to be leaving there before 6am – and there we run into the first problem. The system does not turn on until 6am and Lanyon Place is not the starting station even when it does.

Are we really turning the whole system on earlier just so people can get to the airport by rail rather than road?

Let’s say we are. In practice, however, trains don’t leave a particular station in a particular direction every minute. Currently, the first train to leave Lanyon Place to Antrim leaves at 6.15 and arrives at 6.42. Let’s say we had one leaving for the airport half an hour earlier. It would leave at 5.45, reach Antrim at 6.12, and be at the airport perhaps around 6.18. That’ll have to do.

Of course, the problem is I have to get to Lanyon Place first. Generally, through the day, trains leave Jordanstown at every half hour from 9.06; so let’s say under this new earlier dispensation one is added at 5.06 and 5.36, though quite where most of its passengers are going is a mystery. The journey time of 14 minutes renders the 5.36 no good to me in order to catch the 5.45 out to the airport (and even if both stop at York Street the connection is awfully tight, and it isn’t exactly one I can risk missing) so really to be sure I’ll need to take the 5.06.By the way, that 5.06 will have commenced in Carrickfergus before 5am, meaning the whole system will have needed to be turned on more than an hour before it currently is, with all the staffing, energy and administrative costs that come with that.

But then it also takes about a quarter of an hour to walk to the station, making my departure time around 4.50am. This means leaving more than three hours before the flight, and operating off over an hour’s less sleep for the whole day than I would have had if I had gone by road. And, by the way, I’m never making any of the earlier flights by rail (to places like Glasgow and Manchester) even then.

In practice, offering people this choice comes at the huge cost of opening the entire system over an hour earlier for no purpose other than serving the airport, when the truth is the journey will probably take over an hour longer than it would by car (and probably longer than it would by bus).

Do we really want our rates and taxes diverted from health and education just to give people an option to get to the airport by rail which is impractical for the vast majority anyway?

Anyone who reads his blog will know I am a fan of the train. Use use it regularly and enjoy doing so. However, unfortunately this is where rail reviews come unstuck – rail can only get you from a specific point to a specific point. They are good for city centre to city centre and they are good for suburban connections. They are vastly less effective elsewhere, however – even to relatively small airports in relatively rural locations. This is why, contrary to widespread misinformation on social media, a whole host of airports across the UK, from Bristol to Luton (just to name two which are considerably busier than both Belfast airports combined), do not have rail links.

This is why it is important not just to go with the flow or with immediate intuition, but rather to think about public policy choices. It is also why it is important not to come up with pre-determined solutions before defining the actual problem.

What if there’s nothing out there?

Last week I wrote a piece here on the increasing evidence that the our System, far from being made up of a “typical” star and a “typical” planetary system, is actually extraordinarily exceptional. This is evidence – arguably very scant, but still evidence – that the conditions of the one Solar System we know to have delivered a conscious spacefaring civilisation are perhaps close to unique. In other words, it is evidence that there may be no other spacefaring civilisations out there, because conditions like those here in our Solar System simply may not exist anywhere else.

Firstly to emphasise, it is merely evidence and that evidence is so scant that it may even be outright irrelevant; it is certainly not conclusive. Of course, it may be that conditions like those in our Solar System are completely coincidental to the development of a civilisation which reaches our levels of consciousness and technology (and perhaps goes on to exceed them). It may be that “close to unique” is not quite “unique” and that there are one or two solar system analogues out there (for example, just under 200 light years away, there is a star of roughly the same sequence, brightness and size as the Sun orbited by a planet almost exactly the size of Jupiter at a similar distance to Jupiter). Nevertheless, the presumption – common in astronomy until less than a decade ago – that conditions in other planetary systems would in all likelihood be similar to those in our Solar System has proven to be fundamentally incorrect. This makes the notion that there is in fact “nothing out there” (i.e. no spacefaring civilisation within a relevant distance in space or time) at least worth exploring as a thought experiment.

Definition

Firstly, as part of this thought experiment, we should probably define our terms. When we ask the question “Is there anything out there?” what I think we mean (though commenters may disagree) is “Is there anything at our technological level of development within a distance that may enable some form of communication?”

To put this is cosmic terms: the universe is expanding and even the rate of expansion is increasing; this arises essentially from a process known as entropy which is perhaps best described as the tendency of energy to scatter. To be clear, not only are the various objects in the universe accelerating away from each other (for the most part) because of entropy, but the space itself is expanding. The only known process which works against entropy and serves to clump things together is gravity, and it is currently believed that the Milky Way galaxy (in which we live) is the second largest of a Local Group of galaxies (of between about 17 and about 31, depending somewhat on how you define a galaxy) which are gravitationally bound.

I think, therefore, it is fair to define our question in terms of a quest for a conscious spacefaring civilisation within our Local Group of galaxies; because, even if there are other civilisations out there, if they are beyond that Local Group they will simply continue moving away from us to the point that communication is surely practically impossible and even detection is highly improbable. Of course, our understanding of things could change these variables, but the evidence is overwhelmingly that another “civilisation” will only be relevant to us (and us to it) if it is within our Local Group.

Furthermore, practically, the chances are that another civilisation will only be detectable if it has at least industrialised or otherwise manipulated its home to the point of creating an artificial impact on its planet’s (or perhaps moon’s) atmosphere and, in all probability, if it is itself spacefaring (which some would argue is probably an inevitable consequence of industrialisation anyway). So it is fair to specify that what we mean by “anything” is in fact a spacefaring or at least industrial (broadly defined) civilisation.

Mathematics

I am not a mathematician, but then nor are most people. Fundamentally, the sense in nearly all of us who think about it that there “must be something out there” derives from the sheer scale of the universe and the underlying notion that even if the chances of the development of a spacefaring civilisation in any given star system are millions to one, that would still mean that the universe had loads of them.

To put a little more detail on this, the current estimate is that there are around 150 billion star systems in the Milky Way alone. Though there is some dispute about it, most astronomers tend towards the view that there are more still in the nearby (i.e. “just” 2.5 million light years distant) Andromeda Galaxy, and perhaps roughly half as many in the Triangulum Galaxy. Add this together with all the satellite galaxies in our local group and it is at least reasonable to suggest a total of around half a trillion star systems.

Most people, intuitively, reckon that the chances of a spacefaring civilisation developing in any star system are surely lower than half a trillion to one.

Of course, no one really has any concept of “half a trillion”. However, it is worth emphasising that even this figure is not really the one we should be looking at; and there are also other ways of looking at the problem which put the odds at the other extreme.

Time

Firstly, we are not just looking for a spacefaring civilisation to appear in any of the roughly half a trillion star systems in our Local Group, but specifically for one to appear more or less “now”; in other words, it does not have just to be “near” us in space, but also in time.

Of course, “now” is a tricky concept to define when we consider that the largest galaxy in our “neighbourhood” is 2.5 million or so light years away – this means we see it as it was 2.5 million years ago. 2.5 million years ago there would not have been even the slightest hint of humanity on Earth, far less of tool-making, agriculture, industrialisation and spaceflight all of which occurred in the blink of a cosmic eyelid. A civilisation of our level of development somewhere in Andromeda “now” (at this exact point in time) would not have any notion whatsoever of our existence, and will not have (even if it survives) for several million years yet.

To be precise, therefore, what we are looking for is a conscious spacefaring civilisation that had reached our level of development some time in our past; if it is in our galaxy, that still likely means hundreds or probably thousands of years ago and, if it isn’t, that means millions of years ago.

For all that, millions of years is not a long time in cosmic terms; after all, the dinosaurs were wiped out tens of millions of years ago regardless of where in our Local Group of galaxies you were watching the asteroid impact…

Life on Earth

The dinosaur impact, however, does bring us to a means of putting the odds at millions to one against the development of a spacefaring civilisation at any time, even on the planet which we know to have one.

Out of interest, highly technically, if the dinosaurs had suddenly industrialised and were just at the point 150 years after they had developed a steam engine of putting the first reptile on the moon at the exact moment the asteroid hit, there would in fact be no trace of that development now. However, even accepting that, what we know about the natural history of Earth (including the atmospheric pressure at the time, which would have made dinosaurs’ brains smaller than hours and thus rendered them less intelligent in all probability) tells us that the chances of there ever having been an industrialised civilisation on earth prior to the past quarter millennium are as close to zero as anything reasonably can be.

That means we have been industrialised for fewer than 250 of the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. The odds of an industrialised civilisation existing at a particular point in time even on Earth itself are, on the basis of what we know, many millions to one. Add in the other planets and moons in our solar system, and the odds of a spacefaring civilisation on any particular body even in our own star system surely enter the billions to one.

Therefore, we can make an argument that the odds need to be many billions to one, but also that there is some evidence that they are – even based on our own star system alone, where there is actually a spacefaring civilisation.

It is worth adding, of course, for the purposes of calculating the probability of a spacefaring civilisation developing, we have to discount our own because, without it (or at least the imminent prospect of it), we would not be debating the issue at all. Even the ancient Romans, comparatively advanced by the standards of any human civilisation prior to the modern era, did not think of time and human civilisation in terms of inevitable progress; in other words, even they would have had no real concept of an ongoing technological and sociological march towards spacefaring civilisation.

Astronomy

I have since childhood been a massive supporter of astronomical observation for its own sake. For me, gazing up at the skies in awe and wonder is part of what it means to be civilised.

However, the fact is that one of the best selling points of astronomy to prospective funders (in government, academia or wherever) is the “search of extra-terrestrial intelligence” – in other words, a solution to the ultimate question “is there anyone out there” (albeit defined roughly as above). It is quite heard for anyone to argue that they are searching for something on the off chance of finding it – and I would have to suggest this is why astronomers almost universally lean towards the view, often quite forcefully, that the likelihood that there is “something out there” is high and even that it is obvious that it is high.

I hope I have already demonstrated, however, that it is not obvious that it is high. The great Carl Sagan said that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” but we do have to confront the fact we still have an absence of evidence and even a hint of evidence of absence as our detections of planetary systems beyond our own move into realms even he could scarcely have envisaged. The issue is there is little to be gained by pointing that out.

Psychology

The reason there is little to be gained by pointing out that in fact all the evidence currently points to an absence of any spacefaring civilisation “out there” (at least, at a relevant point in time and space) is perhaps ultimately psychological. After all, in the end, no one likes to be alone!

The risks of encountering a spacefaring civilisation comparatively nearby are fairly well rehearsed by astronomers and futurologists. Given we attained that status so quickly in cosmic terms, the chances are that any other civilisation which has attained it would be much more advanced than we are (though in fact that does not necessarily follow; it could be that technological process inevitably slows down upon achieving spaceflight to nearby astronomical objects because, beyond that, distances just become too vast – indeed, this could be why we are not detecting anything “out there”). If we accept there is at least a probability that such a civilisation will be well ahead of us once detected (and once it detects us, more to the point), we are inclined to think it would treat us like the Conquistadors treated the New World or even like humans treat ants. So how would we possibly psychologically want that?

I would put forward, for the sake of this thought experiment, that the only thing worse than detecting such a civilisation would be detecting, definitively, that no such other civilisation exists. If this is so, and we are in fact alone (at least within our Local Group at this point in time, thus to all relevant intents and purposes), that puts a huge premium on the survival of humanity. If it turns out that we are probably the only conscious life form capable of understanding or even really experiencing the universe anywhere in that universe (or at the very least in our part of it), we arguably become the universe’s very consciousness. Such a responsibility cannot but have a psychological impact! Therefore, I would suggest, we choose to ignore the possibility that we have such a responsibility.

What if there’s nothing out there? The truth is, regardless of where the evidence points, we will always want to pose that question but never really want to answer it…

Establishment, Entanglement and Embarrassment

In William MacAskill’s book What We Owe the Future, a key point is that sometimes little happens in years and sometimes years happen in days. If we look geopolitically, we can see the truth of this – for example 1918/19, 1945 and 1989/90 were the formative periods of the 20th century when an old dispensation was replaced by a dramatically new one, but in other much broader periods life just went on with comparatively little change in the world order.

I have written before about just how dramatic 1989/90 was, even though we did not notice all of it at the time. Not only did it lead to other social change immediately afterwards, such as the collapse of Apartheid, but it also heralded the emergence of the Internet as a public good (having previously been restricted to Cold War defence) and of an entirely new economy based on cheap goods from the Far East (previously unavailable as they were on the far side of the Iron Curtain) and thus on the dominance of the service economy in the West (and of a consequent credit boom which ended in 2007/8).

Typically (and these are not MacAskill’s words) what happens in response to such change is that people cling to the new establishment for too long, until well after it becomes entangled to the point of becoming an embarrassment. In fact, very often it is the success of a new dispensation which leads to new circumstances which then need reform, but those who cling to the initial establishment fail to recognise the entanglement that has emerged from it. Ultimately, as they seek to avoid embarrassment and so resist (managed) reform, until a dramatic (and unmanaged) change supersedes it. In other words, typically, the embarrassment lies not in accepting the need for reform once things become entangled, but in not accepting it…

Of course, in wee Northern Ireland, we may wonder what this has to do with us. Well, quite a lot, because a lot of this has to do with the concept of “Establishment, Entanglement and Embarrassment” – one which is now holding up the operation of democracy itself here.

Establishment, Entanglement and Embarrassment

“Establishment, Entanglement and Embarrassment” as a concept is perhaps primarily associated with healthcare systems. The concept is fairly obvious – a procedure or process becomes established, but once it becomes established it does not quite work as planned and the whole thing becomes entangled; yet it is retained in its initial form for longer than it should be because it would be an embarrassment to sort it out (or, if you prefer, until it becomes an outright embarrassment and thus has to be changed).

This has a lot to do with human psychology and, particularly, confirmation biases. We don’t like to give up something which is established in our mind; we try to simplify and even deny entanglement when it happens; and of course we seek to avoid embarrassment.

Sometimes, this is because the establishment was based on false or limited evidence. We saw this, for example, at the outset of the Pandemic in the West. It was initially established, with some justification based on initial planning, that the virus was not airborne but rather spread by being in the immediate vicinity of droplets or by touch. Hence, we found ourselves washing our groceries and maintaining two metres distance, but we were relatively unconcerned about whether we were indoors or outdoors or even whether we should wear face coverings. In fact, it was apparent as early as April 2020 that the rest of the world had it right and the West had it wrong – there was then an entanglement as the political and scientific leaders we had relied upon became disputed and had to be changed in a way which was not embarrassing (otherwise those leaders would have lost any validity or influence they had acquired quite legitimately based on their qualifications and experience). It took a while to turn that ship around and it was not really until into 2021 that much of the English-speaking world had really come to terms with the fact the virus was airborne and what exactly that meant in terms of public response.

We notice this across healthcare as certain procedures, once taken for granted, quietly slip away when new evidence or technology emerges. Remember getting your tonsils out? Turns out, that probably wasn’t necessary…

This is of course not unique to health systems. Arguably, we are seeing the same thing unfold with HS2, a high-speed railway line from London to the English Midlands. Fundamentally, it can be easily established from elsewhere in Europe and the Far East that connecting places by high-speed rail is a good idea – it is environmentally sound and economically advantageous. However, once the financial costs mount and the social costs become apparent of doing it in such a densely populated area where land is at a premium, the whole thing becomes rather entangled. The embarrassment of cancelling the project has not yet been fully confronted and may yet never be (embarrassment does not need to mean outright cancellation but always requires some sort of major reform), but it has already been cut back. It is unclear at this stage whether the embarrassment now lies in cancelling the whole thing or ploughing on with the limited version now planned.

To be clear, typically what is established is sound based on the evidence at the time. It is simply that more evidence or information emerges subsequently, often as a result of the established system itself, which then causes entanglement and ultimately the outcome will always risk embarrassment – either of changing a plan from an original which was once seen as definitive, or of not changing it and paying the cost for maintaining something now seen as defective. In fact, this is to be expected in healthcare systems and in almost any area of public service or complex operation.

Devolution

One moment within the modern history of the UK when years passed in days was the establishment of devolution under “New Labour” in the late 1990s. Here again, a process was planned (and had been argued about over decades beforehand) and then established with very significant public support in both Scotland and Northern Ireland (less so, at the time, in Wales). Inevitably, however, it became somewhat entangled; Scotland moved dramatically in just fifteen years towards an independence referendum but, most of all, a fundamental issue arose about how to fund devolution given that, ultimately, the money for public services (whether devolved or otherwise) still comes from the UK Treasury via a formula designed for short-term use (albeit based on one from the Victorian Era) in the mid-1970s. This problem does not mean that devolution is not a good idea (indeed it probably has more support than ever), but the embarrassment with devolution overall is that the funding settlement does not really satisfy anyone. This is partly because the money is not generally raised at the level it is spent – this is a constant cause of debate in Scotland and is certainly part of the discussion about the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland (as well as having been amended already for Wales). People in the “devolved countries” vote in one election for who will raise the money and in another for who will spend it – something which is, at best, a serious entanglement. To be clear again, the embarrassment lies not in addressing the financial issue, but rather in not addressing it.

Northern Ireland

This brings us to Northern Ireland, which is now very entangled to say the least. Part of the reason for this is that its initial funding settlement, for reasons we need not discuss in detail here, was quite generous, which meant that it became established that the role of local ministers was, essentially, to give money away. Hence prescription charges were abolished (as they were, not uncoincidentally, in Scotland and Wales), public transport concessions were extended, industrial derating was maintained, and so on. Unfortunately, the Northern Ireland budget no longer contains the extra money to pay for such giveaways, but it remains established that local ministers like spending money rather than saving it. This entanglement, frankly, is one reason that one party does not want to go back into government and actually that one or two others are not doing much to push it back.

Unfortunately also, in Northern Ireland’s case, the entanglement also includes the institutions themselves, which are seen by many as essentially hallowed ground not to be tampered with under any circumstances. The institutions were established, rather cleverly, as a means of sharing power among divided people so that everyone could buy into the government of the place, even if they could not agree on much else. The system, known as “consociationalism”, whereby representatives of two “communities” automatically attained office and there was no opposition, is the established one and therefore it is hard to change no matter how entangled it becomes. Yet it is now so entangled that no one seriously would set it up the same way now – the only reason it is maintained is that it was established that way in the first place and it would be embarrassing to change it. After all, change would mean (it is believed) an admission that actually the institutions as established were not quite all they were cracked up to be. Since they are held up not just by the UK and Ireland, but even by the US and the EU, as a prime example of peace-making, accepting the entanglement is difficult even when it is utterly obvious – to accept it would, after all, surely be somewhat embarrassing. This is exactly what we are seeing now.

Managing Entanglement

Yet leaders are the very people who will accept that if something is not working, it needs to change; or, put another way, if circumstances change so must the structures that manage those circumstances. There need not, in fact, be embarrassment in accepting the obvious point that the institutions as established have: a) already changed several times; b) helped create the very circumstances in which change has become necessary; and c) were never meant to be permanent anyway. In other words, they were always going to become entangled and the actual embarrassment lies in denying that obvious reality.

Firstly, the idea that the “Agreement” is somehow a sacred document is rather countered by the fact it has already been reformed many times – most obviously at St Andrews in 2006/7, but also on other occasions (including the devolution of justice, the implementation of opposition legislation, amendments to Assembly operations and Departmental numbers, and so on). There is a distinction between the principles of the Agreement on one hand and the practical operation of the institutions which flow from it on the other (leaving quite aside that some of the those institutions, such as the Civic Forum, have been quietly left to wither).

Secondly, the very purpose of the “Agreement” was to herald a society which would move on from conflict. To an imperfect but significant extent, it has. In the second Assembly election of 2003, just 5% of seats were won by parties which refused to designate (and even they had had to a couple of years previously to keep the institutions operating); in the most recent, in 2022, that figure was 20%. Figures for the number of “mixed marriages” or the number of people identifying principally as “Northern Irish” show a similar trend – in other words, society here has changed. It is surely a nonsense to try to maintain institutions for society as it was a generation ago when the very purpose of them was to create a new society.

Thirdly, no one in 1998 thought that rigid “consociationalism” would last. After all, if it were such a good idea, everywhere would try it! It was always meant to be a temporary provision, noting also that the principles of the Agreement still require some means of assurance that each identity in Northern Ireland will be fairly represented and protected over time.

Embarrassment

The embarrassment 25 years on, therefore, would be not to respond to this obvious entanglement. It is already well established (ahem) that institutions can be changed, including without all-party buy-in (for example, the very system whereby the First Minister comes specifically from the largest party was not part of the agreement at St Andrew’s, but a side deal between one government and one party). It is already obvious that society has changed, hence the re-alignment in social attitudes and in electoral outcomes. And it was always evident that, while the principles of the Agreement would need to be maintained, the specific structures were always going to be temporary precisely because people’s attitudes have changed.

Ultimately the very success of the Agreement, nearly to quote Stephen Grimason (who reported on the Agreement in 1998 and subsequently became head of the Executive Information Service at Stormont), is that the people of Northern Ireland will no longer merely accept those they elect going into government; they expect them to go into a good government.

Reform

One of the main challenges for anyone governing Northern Ireland now is the implementation of a report on healthcare reform called “Systems Not Structures”. The very point is that it is no longer good enough to have a structure called a “health service free at point of access” if in many instances you cannot actually access it; instead, you need a reformed health system which people can access safely and appropriately to meet increasingly complex and specialist needs. The point here is that the need for reform to a new system is inherent in the success of the old system – it is precisely because people are living longer that those needs are becoming more complex and interventions required are more specialist. The need for reform does not arise because the old system failed, rather because it succeeded. The principles endure, but the system itself must change.

You could say the exact same now about our political institutions. We need a functioning democracy not designed just as a structure to provide a form of administration, but as a system which actually responds to the needs of the people who elect those responsible for it. Just as with healthcare, such a system needs to be reformed not because the Agreement failed, but rather because it succeeded. The principles endure, but the system itself must change.

In healthcare as in politics, there is no embarrassment in recognising the entanglement. In fact, the embarrassment lies in not recognising it…