The North of Ireland
The people in the North of Ireland have been drastically let down by the political system and the political parties in the North of Ireland. The North of Ireland has the most dysfunctional political system in the western democratic world. This has a massive cost for the people.
In the provision of public services and in the economic welfare of the people there is a perfect storm developing. Shockingly, for much of this election campaign, this reality has been ignored.
In the last 15 years of the SF/DUP/SDLP/UUP/Alliance Executive the number of households on the Housing Waiting list in the North has doubled. Now the draft budget produced by the SF Minister routes 2% of the Housing budget away from building homes to fill the hole in the Health budget.
In Healthcare, less is spent per patient in the North now that in any other jurisdiction on these islands. They are robbing one crisis hit department to fill the hole in another crisis hit department.
In Education the five parties have cut more from educational spending per pupil in 10 years than anywhere in the south of Ireland, Scotland, England or Wales. The Minister for Education has admitted that there is a £750million hole in the education budget for the next 3 years.
Any party that limits our future to dependency on the block grant is doing damage to all our services. Aontú opposes the politics of dependency and seeks to develop an economic policy of ambition where we devolve taxation power and grow our economy and reduce the cost of living.
Aontú is the party of political reform. We will reform the political institutions so that no one party can crash the institutions again. It is intolerable and would not be accepted in any other country in the world for a democratic political institution to be continuously crashed while society is in such turmoil. We will ensure that the MLAs that don’t do their job will not get paid.
Aontú is the only major Nationalist/Republican Human Rights party in the North of Ireland. Like many others, we have been shocked that Sinn Féin and the SDLP leadership have voted for abortion up until birth for children with disabilities. We will protect the lives of everyone in society and make sure that no mother or child is left behind.
