'Nobody is in charge' Despair at Stormont drift and neglect

The Good Friday agreement appeared over Northern Ireland like a sunburst, a miracle of political leadership that consigned the Troubles to history.

- Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent

Its signing on 10 April 1998 ushered in an era of peace that endures and is held up as a model for other conflicts around the world. Yet Northern Ireland will mark the agreement’s 28th anniversary today with gloom.

There is gratitude that the shootings and bombings are no more - but disenchantment, verging on despair, with politics. The Stormont estate outside Belfast that hosts the region’s executive and assembly has become synonymous with dysfunction.

The power-sharing coalition’s principal parties, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), are locked in chronic feuding that has crippled legislation and governance, creating a perception of drift and neglect. An opinion poll in January found that just one in four people thought the devolved government had improved their lives.

"There is nobody really in charge. There’s no strategy. Nobody’s taking even a medium-term sense of control or direction," said Claire Hanna, an MP and leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), which is in opposition.

The health service is in crisis, with emergency services severely overstretched and patients facing some of the UK’s longest waiting times. Roads are crumbling and water infrastructure is near collapse, which impedes housing construction. Pollution has turned Lough Neagh, which supplies 40% of drinking water, into a fetid lake with antibiotic-resistant superbugs.