That great satirist Jonathan Swift would have enjoyed the latest problem developing at Stormont: a controversy over how to agree something is controversial.
The question has arisen over bilingual English and Irish signs at Belfast’s new Grand Central Station. Some might consider such pettiness a further absurdity, although others are taking it seriously indeed.
The decision to erect the signs was made by Sinn Féin infrastructure minister Liz Kimmins. Unionist parties believe she should have referred it to the whole four-party executive for approval as required for any controversial matter.
Sinn Féin is insisting the signs do not meet the definition of controversial.
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The Democratic Unionist Party has replied it wants to “put a marker down” over Kimmins’s “shambolic” decision-making process.
An uneasy truce is now being observed, for which the DUP should be grateful as pursuing the issue would only reveal a mess of its own making.
The tactical blundering began in October 2002 when Martin McGuinness was education minister. Knowing Stormont was days away from collapse he unilaterally abolished Northern Ireland’s secondary school selection exam, the 11-plus, apparently in a spirit of why-the-hell-not.
The DUP spent the next four years promising unionist voters it would not permit the restoration of Stormont unless the Belfast Agreement was renegotiated to prevent such a “Sinn Féin solo run” from happening again.
This culminated in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, which amended the law enacting the Belfast Agreement so that any “significant or controversial matters” have to be discussed and agreed by the whole executive.
Deciding what constitutes significant or controversial falls to the first and deputy first ministers, who prepare the agenda for executive meetings. In practice, this means Sinn Féin and the DUP agreeing on what is controversial, which obviously sets the system up to fail.
The DUP believed it had also dealt with this at St Andrews by requiring the restored executive to draw up a ministerial code of conduct. A rule was included in the code enabling any three ministers to vote for a matter to be deemed significant or controversial and brought before the whole executive, where it then would need the support of majorities of unionists and nationalists to pass. This is comparable to the assembly’s cross-community veto mechanism, the petition of concern.
Sinn Féin and the DUP have each had enough ministers since St Andrews to deploy this executive veto on their own. DUP supporters might have expected it to be used over the station signs, yet they have had to settle for waffle about “laying down a marker”.
This is because the DUP is aware it made a mistake at St Andrews. Although the code of conduct is required by law, it is not the law. The law says the first ministers decide what is significant or controversial. If the DUP’s three ministers voted to call in the signage decision then Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill could refuse to put it on the agenda. If the DUP took her to court, it would almost certainly lose. Neither main party at Stormont wants a crisis, which is the only reason the signage row has not caused one.
Worse still for the DUP, it has ineptly made the St Andrews mistake worse. The executive passed a law in 2020 to clarify its process on significant or controversial decisions, after losing a court case over planning permission for a waste incinerator.
The DUP leadership said this law strengthened protection against solo-runs. Other senior party figures and advisers said it weakened the three-minister rule. The leadership was mistaken and suffered an open revolt as it pressed on regardless.
This episode brought the issue to wider public attention.
The executive has survived with a dud veto through 18 years of on-off devolution, and it has other protections for collective decision-making. But with the DUP dropping to second place at Stormont, the problem suddenly looks more dangerous. A veto the party had presented as a way for dominant unionism to contain Sinn Féin mischief has become underdog unionism’s defence against a dominant Sinn Féin – and it does not work, as Sinn Féin could easily demonstrate.
The hardline Traditional Unionist Voice is waiting in the wings to remind unionist voters this was also the basis on which the DUP restored powersharing decades ago.
More language rows are coming with the appointment of new language and cultural commissioners; more serious disputes are inevitable by the nature of political events. The frosty stand-off at Grand Central will not always be possible to replicate.
Daft though the signage row may seem, it is a reminder that Stormont reform is not meant to be an impromptu response to collapse. The Belfast Agreement requires reform to be a constant process of comprehensive review, led jointly by the British and Irish governments. They should consider the matter significant and fairly urgent.
