No one could argue that the ongoing Review of Public Administration in Northern Ireland isn't long overdue. Our health service is a case in point, writes David Adams.
Catering for a population of 1.6 million people, we have four health boards, 19 trusts and approximately 16 other health-related agencies, committees or councils. With so many people concerning themselves with our medical welfare, we should be the healthiest people on the planet.
But, of course, we're not. By the time any extra funding filters down through that bureaucratic jungle, there isn't much left for the sharp end - doctors, nurses and hospital beds.
Health supervision is indicative of how public administration in Northern Ireland, managed as it was during decades of direct rule by largely unaccountable bodies and their various offshoots, became more self- than civic-serving.
For 30 years our roads, railways, water service, sewerage system, education and health service delivery all went into gradual and obvious decline, while the administrative bodies seemed to breed like rabbits. They became so plentiful that it was impossible to keep track of them all, and even to work out where exactly some fitted into the grand scheme of things; never mind expecting anything so novel as their being held to public account for the deterioration in our services and infrastructure.
Certainly, there were direct-rule ministers parachuted in from Britain to whom, theoretically at least, they were responsible. But, in practice, the ministers did little more than rubber-stamp recommendations while concerning themselves with places where votes were to be had, and Northern Ireland was never among those.
The problem with unaccountable organ-
isations is, well, just that, they are unaccountable. Almost without exception, whatever their original raison d'être, left to their own devices they become arrogant, self-perpetuating, self-serving and self-protective.
The Review of Public Administration is the most comprehensive review of its kind ever to be undertaken in Northern Ireland, and it's a sure bet it will recommend taking a scalpel to a lot more than just the health boards - and not before time, too.
Falling within the review's remit, as well, are our 26 district councils. Perversely, while the various government departments and their progeny have enjoyed maximum power with minimum accountability, the district councils have been in exactly the opposite position.
About 600 councillors are elected to the district councils every four years, but once there have control over little more than bins and burials. That, too, is about to change.
The speculation is that the 26 councils will be drastically cut back to only seven or eight - one for each of the six counties, one for Belfast and probably one for Derry as well. It is envisaged that these new, much larger councils will have far greater powers than the waste disposal and cemeteries. They may well be given responsibility for planning, local education, local healthcare, housing, crime prevention and a whole host of other things.
Until now, there's been little or no opposition to the idea of cutting back on the number of councils and devolving extra powers to larger elected bodies - it would be a difficult case. But don't expect this quiet acceptance to last for much longer.
Once the full implications of having powerful, semi-autonomous local councils in operation become clear, there may well be quite a few people who are none too happy with the new arrangements.
In the absence of a working assembly at Stormont the centre - or rather, centres - of political gravity, such as they are, will lie with the new councils.
And in that situation places like Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Armagh won't be looking northwards towards Belfast for a political lead. Naturally enough, they'll look southwards to their nearest neighbours and, on their own initiative, will be seeking to form co-operative cross-Border relationships on issues of mutual concern and benefit with their counterparts in Southern councils.
Formal cross-Border co-operation will begin taking place on issues like planning, health, education, commerce, tourism, the environment, waste disposal and a whole range of other things that we can't possibly foresee.
Cross-Border bodies? The Border regions will be coming down with them. And, what's more, they'll be accountable only to the councils that have chosen to set them up in the first place.
All of that, allied to potential developments in the EU like ratification of a new constitution and, who knows, the UK adopting the euro, will reduce the Border to little more than a line on maps and in people's minds.
Perhaps the current Review of Public Administration, given the conclusions it is bound to reach and the recommendations that will surely follow, is the Plan B (in case of collapse of the Belfast Agreement) that the two governments always denied existed. It might well be that in another few years the Belfast Agreement might seem to a majority of unionists to have not been such a bad idea.