Making Policy in Northern Ireland: A critique of Strategy 2010 by J. Bradley & D. Hamilton
From: Administration 1999 Vol 47 No 3 Autumn (Institute of Public Policy,
Dublin)
3.4 Outward-looking orientation
Recommendations under this heading are grouped under three sub-headings: fostering global perspectives, infrastructure, and EU matters. The plea made in Strategy 2010 for greater "outward orientation" of people and companies is a sad reflection of just how inward-looking and parochial Northern Ireland has become in recent years. Northern Ireland is doubly unfortunate in that it is a region of the UK which is itself perhaps the most euro-phobic member of the EU, as well as being the UK region that is geographically closest to the Republic of Ireland, whose very different experience of building outward-oriented prosperity might be found to be valuable if it could be shared in the context of the island economy. Calls for greater Northern "outward orientation" in such a politically constrained context are unlikely to be very effective.
Infrastructural recommendations are based on the DOE document Shaping Our Future, and deal mainly with improvements to North-South as well as East-West road links. However, while the North-South links are seen as merely a means of facilitating trade, the East-West recommendations are placed in the context of a centralized plan on a UK-wide basis. Curiously, while there is a willingness to recommend elements of energy policy in the context of an island of Ireland energy market (page 185), there is no such willingness when it comes to transport policy. This is an interesting reversal of priorities of all-island policy when viewed in the context of the Trimble-Mallon December 1998 statement on areas for North-South co-operation where, of the twelve areas agreed, all-island transport planning is to be intensified through existing arrangements North and South while energy policy does not feature.
3.5 Self help
Strategy 2010 states that it is action within Northern Ireland that will determine economic success. While some sensible suggestions are presented with regard, for example, to the structure of the development agencies and the form of financial incentives, the discussion would have been better framed in the context of how a region such as Northern Ireland can best use its limited policy autonomy. This is the key lesson that should be taken from the experience of the Republic of Ireland and other successful regions in Europe (Dunford and Hudson, 1996).
A strong recommendation of Strategy 2010 is aimed at the rationalization of "a very crowded local economic development arena" (page 195). However, the actual proposals appear to be very insensitive to the desire of local communities to have a democratic say in how their towns, cities and sub-regions are planned, and they reflect little or nothing of the active efforts of sub-regions to engage in strategic planning and to motivate and mobilize local resources.
A final set of recommendations under the heading of "self help" concern the public expenditure dimension of economic development. In an opening paragraph, it is claimed that Strategy 2010 has:
sought to emphasize proposals which reduce reliance on direct Government subsidy of the private sector and imply significant rolling back of the State (page 207).
However, this is simply at variance with the whole tone and content of the recommendations actually made. Public expenditure per head in Northern Ireland is set to decline only very modestly over the period 1999 to 2002 and is likely to remain significantly greater than in any other region of the UK (page 207).
A policy issue addressed at the end of the chapter of recommendations spells
out how resources for a specific Northern development fund might be found.
It is perhaps a sign of the political vacuum within which this report has
been prepared that the proposed main source of funds is the "rolling back of the State" in the areas of Health and Education! One cannot avoid the
conclusion that in its effort to pin-point resources for the creation of
a specific development fund, Strategy 2010 targeted vulnerable groups (Health
and Education), suggested raising local taxes that are likely to produce
little by way of revenue and be politically unpopular into the bargain,
and held out the possibility of unspecified savings from what could be perceived
as an over-staffed and inefficient public administration. |
