THIS is the time when businesses and institutions look back over the year and note their achievements, maybe even have parties to celebrate the high points.

One institution that won’t be participating in anything like that is Stormont.

Just like 2024, the Stormont Assembly achieved a big fat zero.

In March, the Executive produced Stormont’s first Programme for Government (PfG) since 2012, ignoring the reality that it’s not a government but a body that administers the block grant from Westminster.

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The only people who proclaimed the PfG as an achievement were in the Executive. Outside, in the real world, criticism was universal.

It has nine priorities, because the Executive parties each had to have their pet schemes included. If you have nine priorities, you have no priority.

It isn’t targeted. It isn’t costed. It’s aspirational, rather like Fianna Fáil’s policy on reunification.

Aspirations like affordable childcare have just been announced again but no-one has any idea where the money is coming from. The only timetable for anything seems to be “by 2027”.

In........

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