‘Battle a day’ at Stormont Executive, says minister

Relations at the Stormont Executive have been described as a “battle a day”.

Agriculture and Environment Minister Andrew Muir also said while he was not expecting the administration to collapse, he did not rule that out before the next Assembly election due to take place in 2027.

The Executive was resurrected in January 2020 following a three-year collapse, and suffered political paralysis between 2022 and January 2024 amid DUP protest action against post-Brexit trading arrangements and the Irish Sea border.

Since then it has seen the first programme for government agreed in a decade.

However, Mr Muir said the current Executive led by First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly is currently a “battle a day”.

He also hit out at the slow pace to get items agreed, saying he tabled Northern Ireland’s first environment strategy in March 2024, and it did not get agreed until September, and he has a green growth strategy “sitting since December”.

“We need to be better at how to get those issues turned around,” he told BBC Northern Ireland.

“Some of that, to be honest, is because the DUP and the terms that they entered this Executive are very different to what we were aware of in February of last year. Any of the major decisions have to go to party officers and it takes a while for that to come back.”

Mr Muir said he notices a difference between the Executive that was reformed last year, and how it is now.

“I saw that the First Minister and deputy First Minister were working in a collegiate manner, but in recent times that has ended,” he said.

“It seems that what we’re having at the moment is a battle a day. We need to be very conscious that these institutions are as unstable as the day they were before restoration, and all it takes is one crisis to then push us over the edge in terms of collapse, and people need to be very conscious in terms of what they are pursuing in terms of their politics, where that could lead us to. They need to be very, very conscious of that.

“(Collapse) is not on my agenda, I don’t see that on the horizon but I don’t rule it out.”

Mr Muir said his party, the Alliance Party, wants to see Stormont reformed, and has spoken to both the Irish and UK governments about that.

He said they want “simple solutions” and the removal of “vetoes” around the election of a speaker and parties who walk out of the Executive.

“If one party decides to leave, the show continues, and if that happens, they wouldn’t leave because there are significant parties in Northern Ireland, particularly the DUP and Sinn Fein, who suffer majorly from fomo (fear of missing out), and if the show continued without them I don’t think they would leave, and it would also give us stability and give us an incentive to be able to work round the table,” he added.

Mr Muir also expressed disappointment in unionist parties.

“In recent months I have been really disheartened by the approach of the DUP. It’s been not focused in terms of a positive vision for Northern Ireland but just picking out wedge issues, very much from the playbook of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, and the UUP to be honest are now much more of a lost cause, the idea of them being a moderate voice for unionism is not the case,” he said.