Earlier this week, the Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, addressed an audience at Ulster University, calling for public service reform in Northern Ireland. While we fully support reform to ensure better outcomes for our people, his remarks ignored a crucial reality. Reform cannot succeed without the necessary financial support and a skilled civil service to implement it.
For too long, Northern Ireland has suffered from historic underfunding and underinvestment in key public services. The current model of delivering vital services - especially in health - is not working.
But when the Public Accounts Committee is currently reviewing the building overspends by the NI Civil Service of £2.45bn it points to a lack of expertise to build big infrastructure or manage major projects. A key part of reform needs to be a better skilled civil service.
We want to transform care, improve outcomes, and build a system that serves people better. For years this has been talked about. However, to do it, we need more than just encouragement from Westminster - we need better people and better budgets.
