It is considered a scandal that the South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen will cost the taxpayer three times more than the building is worth, thanks to the Private Finance Initiative.
But there is no daft New Labour debt mechanism to blame at the Royal Hospitals site in Belfast, where new maternity and children’s hospitals are running two and three times over-budget respectively. They are also a decade late – at least the South West Acute opened on time.
The Belfast Trust has simply been overwhelmed by the complexity of both projects. Reports have overlooked further related problems.
The children’s hospital requires completion of the Royal’s new power station, which is also behind schedule.
The delay with the maternity hospital has kept two floors of the nearby critical care centre empty since it opened in 2015, as a link bridge has to be built to it. The critical care centre was plagued with other issues during and after construction.
In 2020, the assembly’s Public Accounts Committee recommended creating a single oversight or advisory body for all major capital projects. Many independent experts agree, but ministers and officials rejected the idea as they felt it would step on their toes.
How many more fiascos will it take before they learn the lesson Kevin McCloud imparts in every episode of Grand Designs?
Stormont needs to hire a project manager.
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New EU product safety rules coming into effect in two weeks will make it impractical for many small businesses in Britain to sell non-food items in Northern Ireland.
The government is reportedly relaxed about the impact because most large businesses will easily cope, while any business that wants to sell to the EU already complies with the rules or will have to do so.
The worst-affected suppliers will be lone traders and micro-businesses selling craft items via online platforms such as Amazon or eBay.
The economic damage from this is judged to be trivial but even if that assessment is correct – which is far from certain – it overlooks the political impact.
Buying tat online is the only direct encounter most people have with the sea border. Experience with a similar frontier between Spain and the Canaries shows disrupting internet shopping can become a major political problem.
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Brexit may have inclined me to over-analyse the DUP, so it useful to be reminded it can be as thick as champ.
The party has robustly rejected a request by senior members of the Commonwealth Games board in Northern Ireland to design a new civic flag, for use instead of the Ulster Banner.
It beggars belief any unionist has to be told the union would benefit from a flag with even a modest degree of cross-community acceptance. If the DUP knows that but still will not say so for fear of a grassroots backlash, it lacks the wit and courage to lead.
A new civic flag was “discussed” by the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition, whose final report has been sitting on the executive’s desk since 2021. The report listed the issue as unresolved, presumably because the DUP contingent on the commission objected.
You could say the DUP’s stance is no less ridiculous than Sinn Féin’s call to discuss a new flag for a united Ireland, yet keep the tricolour. But Sinn Féin has found the tone to get away with it, a political skill beyond the DUP.
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A BBC report has shown gardaí detaining migrants arriving from Northern Ireland. An officer explained that any without “status to be in Ireland” are “removed on a ferry back to the UK on the same day”.
He added this had happened to 200 people this year.
The report has led to jibes about a hard border being acceptable after all. However, such checks have long taken place. It is the swift return to Britain that is interesting.
A UK-Ireland deal on mutual returns was struck in 2020, although Covid and a court ruling meant it had still not been used when a row broke out this April over the UK’s Rwanda scheme.
Dublin blamed the scheme for a surge of migrants via Northern Ireland and vowed to return them to Britain. UK prime minister Rishi Sunak said the 2020 deal was discretionary and no returns would be accepted until the EU allowed the UK to return asylum seekers to France.
Yet a month later, two groups of 25 people each were sent to Britain after crossing the border. It seems the deal has been quietly working ever since, under Tory and Labour governments.
As for why migrants are not returned to Northern Ireland, that is because they would just head south again, as there is not really a hard border – even for them.
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Belfast City Council has defended spending almost half a million pounds to bring a 12-foot puppet up the Lagan. ‘Little Amal’, who arrived by boat rather than bubble, is a representation of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee.
The council has pointed out that “over 280 local creatives, producers, production and event staff were employed to deliver Little Amal’s programme”, a weekend of events that “involved partnerships with over 40 cultural and community organisations, as well as 10 primary schools and nine public and private sector organisations.”
All of this was designed to raise awareness about refugee children.
Around 120 families are living in Belfast under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, a Home Office and United Nations programme targeted at refugee children. Most are in crowded private rental housing. It would have been more useful and impactful if the council had given each family £5,000.
But that would not have employed any creatives.
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It is hard to criticise councils for frivolous spending when Stormont is throwing money away.
Sinn Féin finance minister Caoimhe Archibald had been due to lift the rates cap on houses worth over £400,000. But a discussion of her proposal has not made it onto the executive’s agenda, controlled by Sinn Féin and the DUP, in time to get bills out for the next financial year next April. So implementation will be 2026 at the earliest.
Lifting the cap would raise £11m a year, split roughly 50/50 between Stormont and councils. One year of this revenue has been lost, if not more, by failing to have a meeting.
Could the executive hold an extra meeting to get it sorted? Apparently not.