Northern Ireland's public services face risk of potential collapse
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Northern Ireland's public services are being “crippled” by lack of funding,
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A nurse prepares a COVID-19 vaccine before administering it to Sister Joanna Sloan, left, the first person in Northern Ireland to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Royal Victoria Hospital, in Belfast, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020 (AP)
A government report finds Northern Ireland’s public services, including hospitals, schools, and police crippled by funding cuts, impacting the quality of life of many people.
Patients are waiting over 12 hours in A&E departments, and mental health needs are 40% higher than the UK average, with hospital waiting lists being among the worst in the country, according to a report published by the Northern Ireland select committee on Tuesday.
The investigation also found that Northern Ireland “recently held the world record for prescribing the most anti-depressants per head of population” and that children with special needs are waiting more than a year for receiving the support they need.
The Law Society of Northern Ireland told The Guardian that public services were at "risk of collapse."
Former MP Stephen Farry, now co-director of Ulster University’s strategic policy unit, told the committee it was vital for political leaders in London to grasp how much worse public services were in Northern Ireland compared with Great Britain, describing the scale of the crisis as significantly greater
“The crisis afflicting public services in Northern Ireland has gone on for far too long with the crippling effects of underfunding impinging on the day to day lives of people across communities. The current hand-to-mouth approach when it comes to funding has often been too little, too late," Tonia Antoniazzi stated.
The report found that while Northern Ireland has the highest public spending per person in the UK and raises the least revenue per person, it relies predominantly on a “block grant” allocated to the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland
According to the Barnett formula used to calculate funding, each nation receives the same pound-for-pound increase in per capita funding as national spending, requiring devolved governments to be allocated equivalent levels of finance
The previous British government recognized the crisis in Northern Ireland's public services and upped the country's public sector funding to 124 pounds per person, however, the committee stated that research was being conducted to see if that amount needs to be raised again.
“During our predecessor committee’s inquiry in 2023–24, it heard that the funding and delivery of public services in Northern Ireland were under enormous pressure. One year on, little appears to have changed,” the committee highlighted.
The committee’s investigation found that this has become politically difficult, leaving the devolved government with few available options
