Next week marks two years since the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive in February 2024.
When Stormont returned, the DUP was clear that re-establishing the institutions would not magically fix public services. Years of underfunding and the consequences of that were never going to be resolved overnight.
And today, I am under no illusion about the pressures people continue to face.
I see the condition of our roads and I know how many people are still waiting far too long for medical appointments.
Before restoration, Sinn Fein and Alliance politicians created the impression that Stormont’s return would be transformational in and of itself. We did not. But we did know this, Northern Ireland is better governed by locally elected representatives, accountable to the people we serve and who we live beside, than by semi-detached decision-makers with no real stake in our communities.
Two years on, while we want so much more, progress has been made.
DUP Ministers are to the fore in getting things done.
We have protected public services from even deeper cuts, advanced pay agreements for key workers including teachers and healthcare staff and introduced much needed support for working families with the cost of childcare. Northern Ireland now has more full-time preschool places than ever before, and after over a decade of delay, the NI Football Fund is investing in grassroots sport. Our Ministers are also tackling the ballooning costs of fraud and error in benefit payments and we’re engaged in generational education structural reforms.
That progress should not be dismissed. Nor should it be underestimated. None of it would have happened without restoration.
But this cannot be the limit of our ambition.
