Meeting to agree programme for government postponed
NI ExecutiveA meeting of the Northern Ireland Executive to agree a long-delayed programme for government has been postponed.
The meeting was due to be held on Wednesday morning but it emerged late on Tuesday night that further work is required.
It comes after the draft document was agreed in September 2024 and sent out for public consultation.
Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir said the meeting was pushed back after he asked to see the finalised document before signing it off.
However, he added that the situation had become "a storm in a teacup".
Speaking on BBC News NI's Good Morning Ulster, Muir said there is a meeting scheduled for Thursday morning and he was "confident" the programme for government will be agreed then.
"The only ask from myself - and I think it's a perfectly reasonable ask - is that the finalised document would be received before the meeting so we could consider it."
Muir said the draft finalised document was circulated on Friday afternoon, with a deadline of Tuesday for ministerial feedback.
He said he has not seen the finalised document since feedback was submitted, but hopes to be able to give it "proper consideration" on Wednesday.
One source played down the significance of the delay saying "there's no showstoppers in this".
"It's a process story," added the source, "but there's no sugar coating a postponement and the media is entitled to ask questions."
Nevertheless this development does raise obvious questions about the four-party coalition's ability to govern cohesively.
There had previously been an expectation that the programme for government would be agreed before the anniversary of Stormont's return earlier in February but that that did not happen.
Speaking at the Galgorm on Wednesday as part of an Irish Football Association event, Gordon Lyons, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said he believed the delay was a "process issue".
He added that he expected "an executive meeting within the next 24 hours".
Speaking on Wednesday, leader of the assembly's opposition Matthew O'Toole said it was "disappointing" that the Alliance party were responsible for the final delay.
"Nobody expected the executive to work miracles, but delivering a budget or programme for government on time shouldn't be too much to ask," the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) assembly member said in a statement.
"This farce typifies the dysfunction we have seen since the return of the Stormont institutions last year," O'Toole added.
TUV leader and North Antrim MP Jim Allister described the situation as "the latest episode in the Stormont farce".
He said there were "always excuses but the reality is this is an unworkable system of government".
Not a crisis but a bad look
Analysis - Jayne McCormack, BBC News NI political correspondent
Late-night messages to the media to say an important executive meeting had been postponed - with little explanation - after plans were already in place to sign off a major document would, in a previous iteration of this executive, spelt big trouble.
But within minutes of this news breaking, parties were at pains to call it nothing more than a storm in a teacup and talk it down.
The picture then became clearer: the issue appeared to be with the process of getting it over the line as opposed to anything in the document.
With some parties saying they only got the final version from the executive office late last week, Alliance wanted more time to consider the programme for government before signing it off.
Now that is a complaint we have heard before - concerns about being bounced at the last minute by the bigger parties.
With this document already long overdue, it's yet another reminder of how slow and difficult it can be to operate within a four-party mandatory coalition.
In short, while it's not anything remotely resembling a crisis, to some it looks more like incompetence.
Speaking on Tuesday, Justice Minister Naomi Long said she would have liked to have seen the document agreed sooner but "it's a four party executive, things don't happen at the pace some of us would like but we are there now hopefully".
She said the important thing was "what we can deliver over the remaining two years of this mandate".
"I have quite an ambitious agenda in terms of what I want to be able to do and finance permitting, hope to be able to achieve some of that in the next two years" she added.
It is expected that most of the content of the draft document will be in the finalised programme for government but it is uncertain if it will contain detailed timelines.
Previously, the SDLP leader of the opposition, Matthew O'Toole criticised the lack of clear targets and called for ministers to address specifically reducing waiting list times, as he could not find this when looking through the document.
What are the Executive's nine priorities?
The 88-page document, entitled Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most, sets out the executive's ambitions under several core areas.
- Grow a globally competitive and sustainable economy
- Deliver more affordable childcare
- Cut health waiting lists
- Ending violence against women and girls
- Better support for children and young people with special educational needs
- Provide more social, affordable and sustainable housing
- Safer communities
- Protect Lough Neagh and the environment
- Reform and transformation of public services
When was the last programme for government agreed?
It's been a while since the last programme for government was approved.
Northern Ireland's devolved government was restored in February 2024 after the DUP ended a two-year boycott over post-Brexit checks on goods going between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
The last time an executive managed to get one over the line was during the Assembly's fourth term between 2011 and 2015.
One was also agreed in 2016 and went out to public consultation.
However before it could be passed, the then Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness resigned in January 2017 and power sharing collapsed.