Stormont Assembly unable to challenge Executive

The setting up of a grand coalition in the North to consolidate the paramilitary ceasefires has had the unintended effect of curbing the ability of the Assembly to challenge the four-party Executive, according to a report out today.

With only minor parties in opposition and with the statutory committees overwhelmingly made up of members of the parties represented in government, the Assembly provides no effective alternative locus of power, according to the study from the Constitution Unit at University College London, and the Belfast-based think-tank Democratic Dialogue.

The report was based on in-depth interviews with Assembly members and warns that the problem has been compounded by the unexpected growth of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, which its shadowing committee has struggled to scrutinise.

The research poses questions as to the long-term democratic viability of the structure of government set up by the Belfast agreement. And it comes on top of the recent threat to the future of the Northern executive, posed by the post-dated resignation letter from First Minister, David Trimble.

A number of those interviewed, including those who supported the Belfast Agreement, saw this as failing to provide the basis for a viable democracy in the future.

The report for the first time detects cross-party support for the evolution of a more flexible, voluntary coalition arrangement.

It suggests that such an arrangement would better allow the executive to be held to account.

It also reveals other concerns about the capacity of the Assembly to act as the fulcrum of a system of democratic governance.

A number of AMs expressed dissatisfaction about the "parochialism" of some of their number and resistance has been evident within the Civil Service to the closer scrutiny devolution affords.

The report is critical of the early lack of transparency of the committees, and suggests their attitude to public participation has been "rather unadventurous".

The authors, Rick Wilford of Queen's University and Robin Wilson of Democratic Dialogue, said today: "The good news in this research is that there is now clear, cross-party support for the principle of devolution for Northern Ireland - by no means always evident in the past.

"The concern it throws up is that the necessary pursuit of peace has led to compromise over the rules of democratic governance and the emergence, paradoxically, of a divided yet nevertheless dominant executive.

Northern Ireland's contrived model of democratic governance - and probably sustained peace - requires more executive accountability than is as yet the case."

The director of the Constitution Unit, Professor Robert Hazell, said: "Devolution carried high expectations that the new assemblies would be very different from Westminster.

"This report shows that the Northern Ireland Assembly has been innovative in some respects, but timid in others.

"There are many useful pointers to how the Assembly and its committees could make themselves more effective."