 Good morning everybody and welcome to this event with the leader of the Alliance party, Naomi Lam. Thank you very much for coming, coming down to visit us. It's been a time of, I think, great difficulty for Northern Ireland over recent years. We do listen to Alliance carefully down here and you've got a particular point of view I think which is important. So it really is a great pleasure to welcome you. Naomi Lam will speak for about 20 minutes and then we'll take questions both from people in the audience here and also from people on the Zoom. The whole session is on the record if that's okay and so it's a great pleasure that I welcome you to the to the Institute. Well good morning everyone it is still good morning so I'm really delighted to be with you all today here in person. I think the last time I spoke at the Institute I was online so welcome also to those who are online this morning. We're coming together at a time obviously when there is no assembly or executive and a lot of uncertainty as to when or indeed if those institutions can be restored. We're now 18 months deep into this crisis with no political leadership at the devolved level to guide Northern Ireland through the current pressures in terms of the inflationary pressure that we face global market uncertainty and the impact of that can I think be clearly seen and felt by the public at this stage with increasing pressures in our public finances, attrition of our public services, reduction in public sector investment and lost opportunity costs of not having a locally accountable executive to promote and grow our economy. The crisis of course can trace its roots back to Brexit and in many ways is evidence of the degree to which actions became utterly divorced from consequences over recent years in politics across the UK. Those of us who were concerned about Brexit and its consequences were simply dismissed as negative, as talking the UK down or as experts of whom everyone had had enough. It was an exercise in denial and exceptionalism and we are now paying the price for that as indeed is the GB economy generally. Instead I would argue that we were the realists who could see the challenges that exiting the largest global marketplace was going to present, the economy and specifically Northern Ireland. The degree to which Brexit was an almost existential threat to the Good Friday Agreement settlement predicated as that was on increasing integration interdependence, closer alignment between countries of the EU and a resulting diminution of borders. In a region where there has been constitutional dispute and where it lies at the heart of divisions and instability the refocusing on borders and on divergence was always going to be at best challenging and at worst destabilising. It was also fairly clear from a purely logistical perspective that any checks to goods would happen not along hundreds of miles of border with hundreds of crossings but at the seven discreet ports and airports where the infrastructure was at least partially in place. Of course that has had consequences and whether practical realignment of supply chains or psychological in terms of people's sense of identity the impact has been profound and lies at the core of the current hiatus in our democratic institutions. The protocol whilst clunky and bureaucratic and something that I personally voted against whilst in the European Parliament was nevertheless an attempt albeit I think slightly cack-handed to ease the tensions and allow us free as possible trade given that we were now outside the EU and have the land border we have within the EU country. The Windsor framework I think is a significant improvement on that protocol certainly in Alliance's view it addresses many of the key challenges of the protocol including areas around free movement of goods from GB to NI where they are for NI use only simplification of the checks based on enhanced data sharing and improved access to medicines and other protocols which I think is very welcome. However it isn't perfect no agreement ever is but the negatives for example only goods and not services or capital movements being covered have to be wed against the positives and as far as I'm concerned the positive can't really be overstated. Northern Ireland now has a unique global position with unfettered access for goods into two of the most significant markets the EU and GB. The opportunities through the framework and improved relations between the UK the EU and the US I think are enormous but to realise those opportunities we need to embrace it we need to promote it globally and to local businesses and crucially to ensure stable political institutions through which we can enable growth and facilitate business expansion. Instead we have no executive at a time when we are just about to host a major investment conference and our current 10x strategy for the economy doesn't even mention the protocol the Windsor framework as a USP for Northern Ireland because the DUP could not tolerate any reference to it in a positive sense in that document. Of course it wasn't just within Northern Ireland that Brexit had its consequences it brought relationships between London and Dublin to a low point perhaps the lowest since the time of the Anglo Irish agreement but certainly the lowest since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. That lack of unity of purpose and increasing partisanship makes resolving our differences in Northern Ireland much more difficult. The previous more coherent rigorously impartial joint approach of both governments was crucial to resolving past conflicts and I think that no longer exists. We see that even today where talk of the investment conference is overshadowed by arguments between the Secretary of State and the Taoiseach profoundly unhelpful when we're trying to sell Northern Ireland as a stable place for investment. However I want to avoid a council of doom today and look to what we are doing in the interim and what we can do in the future. Aware of the challenges facing our public sector and our public finances alliance led calls for a stabilization and transformation fund. We believe that if we're going to be able to do the transformation of our public service delivery which is essential we first need to stabilize the services as they are and we then need to have a special pot of money that we use to invest in that transformation. Transformation simply hasn't happened in most departments largely because we've been campered by stop start government but also because the pace of change in Northern Ireland is often very slow. 40% of the time since the Good Friday Agreement institutions started they've been suspended. So we've really only been operational for a relatively short amount of the last 25 years all things considered and so I think what we need now to do is have proper targets for that reform look again at what we want to deliver in high and how we can do that in the most effective and efficient way for the for the public that we serve and I think that there is an opportunity for that to be funded because it brings its own benefits also to Treasury and it's an investment I think in savings. We've also acknowledged and defended publicly as a party the need to reform and both of those conversations are now mainstream there are conversations that are being had in the discussions that we have led by the head of civil service and the various departments in preparation for going back into government. Conversations that wouldn't have been had before are now where the conversation is at because I think we all recognize that we need to reform if we're going to enhance public service delivery and live within our budget. Primarily we want to deliver better services but we also recognize there is a need for them to be financially sustainable. There is a myth out there that Northern Ireland is the best funded region of the UK but as soon as you factor in need to the equation that turns on its head and actually Scotland and Wales are much more fully funded than Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland has much higher levels of need so we also need to engage I think in a more structured conversation with Treasury about how we can implement a fiscal floor which would counterbalance some of the Barnett squeeze that we have seen over recent years where Northern Ireland has lost not just European funding coming into Northern Ireland and then seeing it not replaced to the same degree by the UK replacement funds but also where Barnett itself has been squeezed quite dramatically in Northern Ireland terms and so what we need to do is reopen that conversation. Wales did some really creative work around their public finances that I think we can learn from and take forward on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland. We also need to look to investment because we need to grow our economy if we're going to create a more stable future for people. It's fine to talk about public services and public service delivery to talk about public finances but ultimately if we don't have a strong economy we are not enabling that to happen we cannot support it financially so we need to look at investment and there are really good opportunities I believe for Northern Ireland to grow its economy not only through foreign direct investment where we have traditionally punched above our weight but also supporting the expansion of local startups by driving forward innovation through partnerships and particularly with starting to realign many of our good kind of medium and even small businesses towards growth and particularly export markets where we do have that USP of access. The appointment of Joe Kennedy III as our economic envoy has been a hugely powerful statement from the US about their commitment to helping us grow our economy and the work that he has done alongside our departments and our party leaders around the table in terms of aligning his ambitions with the ambitions that we share in terms of the sectors that we're interested in growing where we think we already have established strengths whether that's cyber crime whether it is cyber security whether it's our life sciences or our agri foods has been hugely important and he has become a real champion and friend for Northern Ireland in a very short period of time but he has invested a huge amount of time and energy in doing so and I think that we need to work with him and support him in that. We also as I referenced earlier have the UK government's investment conference today we're over 150 businesses will be coming to Northern Ireland with a view to seeing what opportunities lie here for them and I think that that too is for us a really exciting prospect because we then have a follow-up trade delegation from the US later this autumn but of course it all starts with us not having an executive there to promote and sell Northern Ireland and so that will fall to UK government ministers some of whom may only have been in Northern Ireland once before today and yet will be welcoming investors on our behalf I think that's a failure on our part. We do however have workforce challenges in Northern Ireland that we need to acknowledge despite the fact that employment has fallen slightly in the last quarter we are almost at full employment and that has led to wage inflation and competition in sectors becoming quite stiff in order to be able to service growth so we need to focus a lot of our energy on skills and particularly on upskilling people in the workforce for new opportunities and then we need to look I think very carefully at how we get people who are outside the workforce to re-enter and I'm going to look at two different areas that I think are really important to us as we go forward. Re-entry into the workforce for women in particular has been a barrier because we haven't had childcare properly managed in Northern Ireland and I think we are doing some work as party but also we're encouraging the executive office and the head of civil service to look at how this could be part of any manifesto for any incoming government in any program for government going forward. It would unleash about a billion pounds into the economy if we could get those women who are currently either part-time or out of work back into work and when we ask them what they need childcare is one of the key issues so we need to deal with that. We also have a large group of people who are economically inactive and we could get them trained and skilled for entry-level jobs but it goes much further than that because we know those who are economically inactive are more prone to be in per-mental and physical health. They are more prone to have other complications which then place pressures on their other public services and so by getting people into a work environment where they have that dignity where they're able to make a contribution and have a stake in society we're actually improving more than just our employment rates and so that's something that I think we need to see as an opportunity. The challenge of course is now with the absence of freedom of movement if we don't upscale these people and we do get the new jobs we will not be able to fill them and that's something that we're very conscious about so we cannot grow our economy unless we can bring those people with us and we shouldn't grow our economy at their expense so it's a very important part of the strategy as a party that we want to take forward. There are also I believe enhanced opportunities for North-South cooperation in these more difficult times. As the Irish economy grows and in places starts to overheat there will be opportunities that can no longer be absorbed in the South but that could be absorbed potentially in Northern Ireland and there is a certain advantage to Ireland as an Ireland remaining a focus for people's investment rather than see that investment go elsewhere whether it's North or South. There are also significant opportunities I believe for the Irish government who do have a surplus at the moment to invest in infrastructure and services which would have significant cross-border impacts whether those are road services or whether those are train services or whether those come as for example cross-border health services and that would bring benefits I think on both sides of the border that would lift the economies on both sides. However it is important all of that said and all of that important work happening that we do need a devolved administration to enable and facilitate the alignment of priorities and enable our economic growth so we can continue with those things so we're not wasting our time in the current hiatus but I would still rather see active ministers in place which brings me to the chances of that happening. So for now the jury's out the sector of state suggests there may be significant progress being made behind the scenes others of us are somewhat more skeptical about that based on what we hear directly from the DUP however one thing is clear we have a very small window of opportunity to restore things if they're not back up by November we could be entering a prolonged period of suspension given the UK general election happens next year and it's unlikely that any significant changes will happen immediately prior to that and the government's bandwidth to deal with that will become increasingly small we also are conscious that there is a general election here the year after and I think once you get into that electoral cycle it's very difficult to get people to provide that rigorous impartiality that's needed to show leadership in terms of overcoming these challenges as things stand the absolute deadline and I say absolute and inverted commas because in politics nothing is absolute but the absolute deadline is January when the current legislative cover um expires and that would trigger assembly elections as early as March 2024 the question of course remains as to what an election under the current system would achieve um other than potentially a cost of about six million pounds and it's potential change to that current system that I suspect the Taoiseach alluded to when he talked about plan B recently so I want to talk about his plan B but I want to be clear that for alliance reform of the Good Friday institutions is not plan B but an essential part of plan A which is to restore the executive and assembly on a sustainable footing going forward for while the governments have at each crisis sought to resolve institutional collapse by addressing the political demands of whichever of the main parties is currently holding the institutions to ransom they have failed to deal with the underlying cause of instability and that is the fact that any single party of the main two can collapse our institutions at will the alliance paper assured uh shared institutions for a shared future sets out our proposals for how 25 years after the Good Friday agreement we could reform our institutions within the broad principles of the Good Friday agreement but ensuring that they are fit for purpose and reflective of the new circumstances that pertain to politics at this time the growth of alliance over recent years is only one indicator of how far society has traveled in the last 25 years and the idea that we are two separate communities monoliths forever separate just no longer represents the diversity and change in our community and our institutions now need to catch up we are one community with many traditions cultures and shared experiences and our constitutional aspirations where we have them are only part of our political identity and for many are no longer the defining point of that identity yet we still when we go to the assembly on our first day as our first act have to sign in as unionist nationalist or other setting up a confrontational and oppositional dynamic within the chamber from the moment we arrive we vote on key issues via so-called cross community voting but that voting diminishes the votes of the largest cross community party which is alliance as our votes carry less weight and those so-called cross community votes which are actually parallel consent and it also gives a veto to small groups within unionism or nationalism to block progress even when an overwhelming majority of the rest of the political reps believe that it's the right direction of travel if I just look at the election of a speaker in the assembly for a moment when Patsy McLoone was nominated as speaker of the new assembly we voted for him as did over 72% of those present in voting that's a higher percentage than the people of Northern Ireland who voted for the Good Friday Agreement yet it wasn't sufficient to elect the speaker in the chamber if we had applied parallel consent to the Good Friday Agreement we wouldn't be having this conversation because it wouldn't have passed so we think we need to look again at weight of majority voting which incentivizes cooperation across all of the parties encourages people not to dig in and wait to the last minute and deploy a video but to engage with others to modify proposals and to work through them and also allows our votes to count equally with everyone else in the chamber and it's something that I've said before on record if we cannot get it through the political institutions we will consider going to court over because it isn't an it isn't an equity at the heart of the system that my vote counts for less than those who designate a unionist or nationalist and fundamentally the ability of the two largest parties to deny people a government is anti-democratic and unsustainable by not going in as first or deputy first minister or by exiting that office government ends government collapses it holds back reform of republic services and it denies people progress we would protect the right of parties on the basis of their mandate to take those posts but we would remove their inability opt out and for government to still be formed in their absence because it is important that the rights of individual parties to take a political stand does not outweigh the rights of the public who voted in overwhelming numbers to have a government formed and that's the situation we have found ourselves in more than once in the last number of years so for us this isn't isn't just a plan b if we're going to ensure that any restored assembly will not collapse again this is an essential part of plan a i want the lands to be part of a stable government one which can deliver real progress which is ready to exploit the economic opportunities for all of our people and improve their quality of life reform of the institutions is the only basis on which that kind of stability and progress is possible public confidence in the good friday agreement institutions is at an all-time low a shameful situation in the 25th anniversary of its signing and any further collapses will further erode that confidence and will risk people losing all faith in it to deliver the thing that is promised in the first paragraph in the first page of strand one and that is effective devolved government i think it's now time that both governments acknowledged in public as they have in private as co-guaranteurs of the good friday agreement that reform is essential and as co-guaranteurs they act to save the good friday agreement before it is truly it thank you