Arm's-length Bodies

Part of Private Members' Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 7:30 pm on 22 November 2016.

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Photo of William Irwin William Irwin DUP 7:30, 22 November 2016

This is a timely motion, given that we are well into the first year of the new Assembly term. Already, the restructured Departments appear to be responding well to the mergers that took place. Having been the Chairperson of the ARD Committee and having worked through the merger of the Environment and ARD Departments, I know that there was a clear argument for the combination of those Departments, given the many cross-cutting functions of each division of government. I recall that, in earlier discussions on the issue, the DUP was out in front in actively calling for and subsequently working towards a reduction in Departments. For much of that time, our party was a lone voice in pursuing this important matter.

The public rightly stated that Northern Ireland, for its size and population, was over-governed compared with other parts of the UK. We in the DUP listened intently to those concerns and took action. We have already overseen the reduction in Departments from 12 to nine and a reduction in local councils from 26 to 11. There are further targets to hit, namely a reduction in the number of MLAs by one in each constituency by 2021. That was all in a bid to rationalise our Government to better reflect our population size. It is therefore only right that we take that a stage further and look at the many arm's-length bodies that exist across our remaining departmental remits and seek, where possible, to reduce the number of such bodies.

There are, of course, arm's-length bodies that play a very important role, and no one is saying that every single body should be done away with. However, it is the right time to start looking at the role and functions of all arm's-length bodies to see where and how efficiencies can be made. In areas where the duplication of remits and services takes place, steps can surely be taken to ensure that that is not the case, and if that means that a particular body is no longer needed or can be subsumed into another existing body with no loss of service, surely a realistic assessment must be made of its future.

There are innumerous arm's-length bodies. I am aware that the Communities Department, for example, has 21, not including the Housing Executive, and that is only one Department.