Northern Ireland has stepped back from the brink of another political crisis whose origins lay in the implementation of the Stormont House Agreement of 2014 which contained agreements on dealing with the disputed areas of Northern Ireland’s past, and flags and identity, but it was the issue of welfare reform that provoked a crisis. Although social security or welfare benefits is constitutionally a devolved matter, by convention Northern Ireland has largely followed a policy of parity in legislation. The DUP minister who held the portfolio negotiated a number of flexibilities with the Department of Work and Pensions while the Stormont House Agreement had delivered a financial package of support to allow the Executive to develop a slightly different welfare regime. A major obstacle to implementation, however, arose when Sinn Fein still refused to pass the welfare reform bill in a dispute which developed over the time span of the mitigation measures. This resulted in the UK Government imposing fines to recoup the extra cost of unreformed benefits from the Northern Ireland block grant, which threatened an agreed budget, hastening the possible collapse of the Executive.

This scenario was overshadowed by a more traditional political crisis when two murders in Belfast raised the spectre of continuing paramilitary involvement by the Provisional IRA.  This incident provoked a strong reaction when the Official Unionists withdrew their single minister from the power sharing Executive. The DUP having failed to obtain an adjournment or suspension of the Assembly refused business as usual. The UK Government with the Irish Government responded by convening new cross-party talks outside the devolved institutions with two objectives, to secure the full implementation of the Stormont House Agreement and to deal with continued paramilitary activity.

After 11 weeks of talks the Fresh Start Agreement was published in November 2015 and it was underpinned by a financial package which gave the Executive £2billion in additional spending power. The first section of the report contained a commitment to a strategy to tackle paramilitarism, criminality and organised crime while strategies for dealing with the past were set aside for further discussion. This did mean that the main focus of the Agreement was on the issues of welfare and finance.

Sinn Fein agreed to accept the mechanism of a Legislative Consent Motion by which a Westminster Welfare Bill would be debated and approved at Stormont. Significantly the under occupancy criteria or bedroom tax would not apply to Northern Ireland. The Executive would be able to top up UK welfare benefits for four years, allocating £585million for the purpose, followed by a review. The UK Government would provide wider financial support: capital borrowing and funding; borrowing for infrastructure projects; and retention of agreed asset sales. There would be flexibility to repay the £114million welfare deductions (fines) from asset sales and capital budgets. The Fresh Start Agreement also gave the go ahead to much of what had been set out in the original Stormont House Agreement including a commission to report on flags and identity issues, the devolution of the Corporation Tax rate from 2018, plus some financial support from the Irish Government for infrastructure projects and some limited reforms to the working of the devolved institutions.

Questions can be asked whether the 2015 Agreement amounts to a fresh start for devolution but the recent crisis does demonstrate some lessons about both the operation of devolution in Northern Ireland and also of party politics:

1. It demonstrated, firstly, the ambiguities in the division of welfare social services between devolved and non devolved matters. There was ambiguity in the statutory requirement in the Northern Ireland Act 1989 for securing between the UK and Northern Ireland ministers to the extent agreed a single system of social security, child support and pensions. There was ambiguity in that tax credits was an income tax matter and therefore not devolved, and also ambiguity caused by the principle of the UK Treasury paying the full cost of welfare benefits.
    
2. It demonstrated the lack of clarity on what happens in the event of no agreement on a benefits system. The Treasury guidance on funding only states that if the Northern Ireland Executive changes social security policy to differ from the UK, UK ministers will need to take a view on where and how to adjust this funding.
    
3. It showed the obvious reluctance of the UK Government to suspend Stormont and introduce Direct Rule. The Prime Minister made several speeches stating that it was up to the Northern Ireland politicians to sort problems out, without Westminster intervention, indicating that there should be an end to running to Westminster in times of crisis.
                                                                                                           
4. When the UK Government did intervene directly through participation in a talks process a return to a Direct Rule was a last resort. Such a development would not only have represented a failure to sustain the peace process but would have presented difficulties in taking up parliamentary time and been an embarrassment at a time when the Government was attempting to implement English Votes for English Laws at Westminster.
    
5. The crisis also drew attention to the role of the Secretary of State who played a key role in representing the views of the UK Government in not allowing Northern Ireland a separate welfare regime but also had a refereeing or negotiating role. The crisis marked a more interventionist approach.

The crisis also illustrated issues relating to devolved politics of Northern Ireland. The withdrawal of the Official Unionist party from the power sharing Executive raised questions about the continuation of a totally inclusive consociationalism approach. Such considerations were further promoted by proposals to facilitate an opposition. The political crisis highlighted the problems caused by a scenario of consociationalism dominated by two main parties leaving the other three smaller parties uncertain whether it is best to accept a marginal role in the Executive with a ministerial office or to go into an official opposition. The Fresh Start Agreement illustrates a more general axiom from political science that a dispute around a socio-economic issue is always easier to resolve than a dispute rooted in ethnic or religious differences. Thus issues of welfare and finance proved easier to resolve in the Agreement than the issues of flags, traditions and dealing with the past. There was actually a degree of consensus between the DUP and Sinn Fein in that the DUP had voted against the welfare reform bill of 2012 in Westminster and in 2015 voted against the Conservative Government proposals on reducing tax credits.

The 2015 Agreement is scarcely the fresh start for devolution claimed for it and leaves some of the major issues which have continued to plague the stability of the devolved arrangements unresolved. In particular the system of vetoes, the ambiguity over the devolved status of welfare benefits, the existence of separate ministerial departments, the creation of an official opposition and a more interventionist role for a Secretary of State.

Derek Birrell is Professor of Social Administration and Social Policy at the University of Ulster.

Image: EHRENBERG Kommunikation