Now where will the axe fall

While we can all try (and fail) to suppress a smile at the NI Executive’s discomfiture when faced with harsh economic realities, there is a serious issue at hand for Northern Ireland. That is the potential loss of the wads of cash we welcomed when the Troubles blighted our land.

So-called ‘serious’ economists tell us that there are areas of the UK that have worse levels of deprivation than us, and that we can’t keep holding out the begging bowl. And with Europe focussing its resources on new member states, we can’t keep looking there either.

However, I wonder how many have actually looked at the infrastructure that is propping up the local economy at the minute. The all-too familiar cries come that we’re surviving because of the 60 per cent of economically active people working in the public sector.

At the same time ‘front-line’ service expenditure in Northern Ireland is in some areas woefully low. One example, is the spending on personal social services for children, which is a fraction of that spent elsewhere in the UK.

This has, of course, subsequent implications in terms of health for those self-same children when they reach the age of economic activity.

Similarly, the history of underfunding on mental health…the policy of rationalising schools when statistics predict a bigger school population…the lack of savings made by the Review of Public Administration so far…

In other words there is a crisis coming down the tracks in many of the public services.
Should the axe fall on any of these areas the consequences…well there will be a helluva lot of them. Instead Nigel Dodds is considering, as mentioned earlier, a reduction in the number of departments. He could instead look at how many of the civil servants populating the massive buildings around the Stormont Estate actually have a productive function…and how many have meetings about meetings rather than delivering services.