Editorial: To make Northern Ireland work we need to try to keep it solvent

One of the few unequivocally good things to emerge from the 2020 New Decade New Approach deal to restore Stormont was the NI Fiscal Council. The watchdog describes itself as "an independent body” created “to bring greater transparency and scrutiny to NI's public finances". Such scrutiny was sorely needed. Apart from a handful of MLAs like the former unionist John McCallister, there has been barely any demand within Stormont for fiscal prudence or meaningful reform of the public sector and spending.

It is no exaggeration to say that the infantile assembly approach to spending has been yet another gradually mounting crisis since 1998. Far from a return to Stormont being essential, there is a very real risk that such a restoration will lead to a resumption of the old mindset of spend, spend, spend, combined with resistance to any efficiencies and ingratitude towards our funders in the Treasury, and demands for yet more.

Now the Fiscal Council has estimated the Stormont funding gap in the province to be £800 million. We will be told by politicians that the problem is inadequate resource from London. But unionists in particular should be wary of that argument. It is a case that is gleefully made by separatists in Scotland and nationalists here, whom it suits to depict the UK as miserly.

But such arguments rightly antagonise our paymasters, and those members of the public in England who follow what happens here, where we get 25% more funding per capita than they do. Council members have examined potential ways to bolster finances in Northern Ireland including revenue-raising measures such as domestic water charges.

That might not be the way to proceed but politicians who want Northern Ireland to succeed must also think hard about how to keep it solvent.