“If the public increasingly believes devolved government exists only as a permanent stage for political grievance and managed outrage, confidence in the institutions themselves will continue to erode, regardless of what delivery statistics say.”
06:00, 31 May 2026
First Minister Michelle O’Neill MLA (right), and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly MLA(Image: Liam McBurney/PA Wire)
For the first time in quite a while, I found myself reading Stormont’s progress report with a degree of surprise.
That is not because Northern Ireland’s problems have suddenly been solved. Far from it. Our waiting lists remain among the worst in these islands; families are still under immense financial pressure; social housing demand continues to outstrip supply; and the Executive is staring down the barrel of another bruising budget battle with the Treasury.
But buried beneath the political noise surrounding the Executive’s first annual Programme for Government report was something that has become strangely unfamiliar in Northern Ireland politics – this is evidence of actual delivery.
When the Programme for Government was published last year, I was among those who criticised it. While it contained plenty of ambitious rhetoric about “opportunity” and “hope”, much of it felt frustratingly vague. The document leaned heavily on aspirations rather than hard accountability. Even some of the measurable commitments came with caveats attached.
Take health, for example. The Executive set a target of treating an additional 70,000 patients by 2027, while simultaneously acknowledging that, under existing funding constraints, reducing waiting lists would not be possible. It was difficult not to read that as an attempt to manage expectations rather than transform outcomes.
And yet the latest figures show the Executive substantially exceeded its own target, delivering more than 237,000 additional outpatient, diagnostic and inpatient procedures, and four-year waits for some major procedures have fallen dramatically.
That does not mean Northern Ireland’s health crisis is over. One-year interventions are always easier than long-term systemic reform. A waiting list can fall sharply after concentrated investment, yet remain fundamentally dysfunctional. But it would also be dishonest to pretend those improvements are meaningless simply because they fall short of complete transformation.
The same tension exists around childcare. The Executive can point to impressive uptake figures for its 15 per cent subsidy scheme, with more than double the projected number of children receiving support. Yet many parents will reasonably question how transformative that support truly feels when childcare fees themselves have risen by around 17 per cent, effectively swallowing much of the benefit.
This is the uncomfortable space Stormont increasingly occupies, marked by measurable progress that often feels politically invisible.
Part of that is understandable. People judge government through lived experience rather than spreadsheets. If families still feel squeezed and patients still struggle to access treatment, ministers cannot simply wave statistics around and expect applause.
But I also think Northern Ireland has drifted into an unusually deep cynicism about devolved government itself. After years of institutional collapse, stalled reform and political brinkmanship, many people have simply stopped expecting Stormont to function in any meaningful sense at all.
That cynicism now shapes the wider political culture around the Assembly. Every disagreement becomes a public performance. Every delay becomes a social media skirmish. Every policy dispute is framed less as the messy reality of coalition government and more as evidence that the institutions themselves are incapable of governing.
The row this week around the Good Jobs Bill was a perfect example. Here was legislation that all Executive parties, bar the DUP, support in principle, yet the public discussion quickly descended into familiar finger-pointing between Sinn Féin and the DUP over process, timing and blame allocation. The substance of governance was almost entirely drowned out by the politics surrounding it.
That performative conflict actively obscures what governance is actually happening underneath.
None of this is an argument for complacency. The Executive’s ambitions remain relatively modest compared to the scale of Northern Ireland’s structural problems. The report itself still reveals major challenges around housing delivery, the Ulster University expansion at Magee and long-term public service reform. Ministers are also correct that they are attempting to govern within an exceptionally difficult financial settlement.
But there is a danger in treating all incremental progress as irrelevant simply because it falls short of total transformation. Politics here has become so conditioned by failure that even partial success struggles to register.
The irony is that Stormont may now be governing more effectively than many people assume while simultaneously communicating that governance more poorly than ever.
If the public increasingly believes devolved government exists only as a permanent stage for political grievance and managed outrage, confidence in the institutions themselves will continue to erode, regardless of what delivery statistics say.
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