"Poisonous" is the word which one inside source uses to describe the atmosphere in Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive these days. Trench warfare has erupted,
with one minister saying a colleague should be sacked, one party negotiating to pull
out of government, and insults traded daily. With an election coming on May 5, some
politicians are suggesting that the all-party powersharing system be scrapped.
It sounds close to breakdown, but in fact it is progress of a sort. The arguments
are over money, not flags, and the division fracturing the Stormont executive is no
longer the orange and green one which used to lead to suspension and deadlock. Now
the battle lines are drawn between the big parties – Sinn Féin and the DUP – on the
one side, and the small ones – UUP and SDLP – on the other. Alliance, predictably,
straddles the middle ground, wagging a disapproving finger at the antics of the
others.
After four years of joint government, Sinn Féin and the DUP have eventually found
the measure of each other and reached an understanding. Martin McGuinness and Peter
Robinson are both noted for having short fuses, but they have defied the prophets of
doom by forming a good working relationship.
The rapport was strengthened by McGuinness's warmth and understanding towards
Robinson during the Irisgate scandal. It improved still further after Gerry Adams,
who had a penchant for confrontation with the DUP, reduced his role and eventually
resigned from the Assembly altogether.
As one DUP source put it: "A few years ago nobody believed that the institutions
would last this long; now people assume they will go on forever without any change."
Last week Robinson and McGuinness stood together at an impromptu press conference on
the Northern Ireland coastguard, while the deputy first minister lashed into the
Ulster Unionists for not being team players. The two are also impatient with the
SDLP, but the most immediate focus of their combined anger is Michael McGimpsey, the
UUP health and social services minister who controls around 42% of the executive's
budget and wants more.
McGimpsey is a grave and quietly spoken man who is sometimes lampooned as an
undertaker, but in the past few weeks he has been lively enough. He certainly
infuriated Robinson and McGuinness by appearing on the Stephen Nolan show on BBC
Radio Ulster to demand more money for the health service, and warn that the present
level of funding is costing lives.
McGimpsey believes health spending will "fall off a cliff" next month. "We do not
have enough money to cover domiciliary care packages, we have waiting lists in the
Western Trust and the Northern Trust. That is a disgrace," he said, suggesting that
the executive's implicit contract to provide a decent health service was being
broken.
McGimpsey has a strong case and banks of figures, provided by his civil servants, to
back it up. The problem is that it sounds more like the sort of talk you would hear
from an opposition spokesman, a pressure group, or a trade union representative
rather than an executive minister.
McGimpsey fired salvos of statistics at Sammy Wilson, the DUP finance minister, who
responded by suggesting that health and social services are inefficiently run and
could take a 6% cut.
Last week Robinson snapped, characterising McGimpsey's behaviour as "despicable".
The first minister claimed that "anybody who looks at how government operates will
recognise that in any form of administration, the [health] minister would be
sacked". He then praised two ministers from his own party, Arlene Foster and Edwin
Poots, and two from Sinn Féin, Catríona Ruane and Conor Murphy, for taking a more
responsible approach when it came to absorbing cuts in their departmental budgets.
When McGuinness joined in, McGimpsey hit back, accusing the deputy first minister of
hypocrisy for "knocking on doors in Dublin" in the Irish general election to canvass
against health cuts while calling for them north of the border. Sinn Féin said
McGuinness "reacted angrily" to McGimpsey's comments and accused the UUP man of
continually using "the health service in a cynical attempt to undermine the
executive".
Repeating an argument made by the DUP, McGuinness accused McGimpsey of double
standards for supporting the Tories in the general election, and then complaining
when his budget was affected by £4 billion in cuts that the government had imposed
on Northern Ireland's block grant. McGimpsey "was and remains a semi-detached member
of these institutions", McGuinness said.
The eruption of public anger and megaphone diplomacy reflects the poisonous
atmosphere around the executive table itself. McGimpsey needled the furious
McGuinness by saying, "calm down Martin, don't get so excited". McGuinness and
Robinson are both accustomed to getting their own way, as well as being leaders in
struggling to implement a difficult budget. Yet, however annoyed they may get, there
is little they can do to bring "semi-detached" McGimpsey or other UUP and SDLP
ministers into line.
Under the St Andrews and Good Friday agreements, ministers are appointed to the
executive by party leaders in proportion to their strength in the Assembly. Since
only their own leaders can remove them, there is an incentive to dig their heels in
rather than take responsibility for unpopular measures. This encourages a "silo
mentality", whereby each minister utterly controls his or her own fiefdom.
That worked well enough when there was plenty of money and a Labour prime minister
at Downing Street generally willing to cough up whatever was necessary to keep the
peace process on track. Now, after four years of political stability, that has
changed. The all-party government is surrounded by checks and balances, "ugly
scaffolding" as Mark Durkan called them, which make it hard to deal with the
business of taking difficult decisions quickly. It is, in other words, approaching
its sell-by date.
The problem is that the system makes no provision for the sort of formal opposition
you find in most parliaments. There are no funds, no speaking rights, and no
committee chairmanships for opposition parties; so there is an incentive to stay in
government even if you oppose government policy. The SDLP, for instance, voted
against the last budget and will probably vote against this one, knowing that Sinn
Féin and the DUP will still push it through, provided they stick together.
The UUP is currently pushing for funds to allow an opposition, and the DUP are
expected to release a paper on this before the election. The SDLP are also looking
at the idea, and voluntary coalition is Alliance party policy.
Sinn Féin is the main hold-out, but its biggest objection is that it doesn't want to
be pushed into opposition. The prospect of the UUP and SDLP, increasingly seen as
the enemy within, leaving government may be more palatable. Last week Conor Murphy,
Sinn Féin's regional development minister, said bluntly that neither of the parties
would be much missed.
At least this debate marks a step forward beyond the sectarian squabbling that went
before.
