Welcome to 2025. It’s an odd one for politicos in Northern Ireland – for the first time in a decade, we face general political stability all around us.
Two governments with fresh mandates are in office and we have a stable Executive with no serious prospect of either the DUP or Sinn Féin bringing the entire thing crashing down.
With this new stability, our MLAs will face an urgent question when they return to work: what will they do with this new stable political environment?
Will they play it safe, continuing with un-costed motions and campaigns? Or will they begin making unpopular decisions that may cause short-term political problems, but in the long-term, we will look back and applaud the bravery that improved things for the public?
During the Christmas season, one of the main issues that made headlines was traffic congestion in Belfast.
Businesses and the public were frustrated as gridlock became a daily norm for everyone trying to get around the city.
To be fair to John O’Dowd, there was no quick fix he could have come up with that would have sorted the congestion issues; the problems in Belfast are like many other policy challenges we face, decades in the making, with poor decisions and a lack of strategic thinking coming home to roost.
However, on infrastructure, like so many other things, our political leaders need to be ready to court unpopularity to achieve more significant policy wins.
The Luas has been in operation for more than 20 years in Dublin; this is now largely regarded as one of the success stories of the Celtic Tiger era.
You would think that such a significant infrastructure piece was broadly welcomed at the time; however, you would be wrong.
Go back and look at many of the columns and the headlines from the years that witnessed parts of the city centre being dug up and blocked off. The pain for commuters to get the Luas in place was real and caused a lot of complaints for politicians to navigate.
Yet, within just a few short years of operation, the demand from the public was not about scrapping the Luas but extending it so that more communities could feel its benefit.
I am not writing this as an ode to one infrastructure project, just as a reminder that to achieve real changes, they are seldom done without a degree of unpopularity.
For any big policy change, there will be trade-offs, and some sectors will lose out. The task for our politicians is to identify meaningful changes that can be delivered and then hold firm in ensuring they are delivered.
In Northern Ireland, we often use a policy comfort blanket by thinking everyone can be a winner on every decision.
The Late Late Show approach to government, which has something for everyone in the audience, has gotten us to the situation we are in today.
To our MLAs, I say you are free now. You do not have to worry about an election or an impending crisis. 2025 is the year to kick-start meaningful reform, and if a good part of that reform doesn’t draw some degree of criticism, then you are not doing it right.
From health to education to infrastructure, there is a minefield of controversial issues and challenges to be resolved.
However, just because the problems have mounted over the years does not mean we cannot solve them. Yes, that will take time to achieve, but it will also require politicians holding their nerve.
Whenever you look at an issue like transport and marvel at the Republic or cities like Amsterdam, you should have a read at how politically difficult many of these changes were. There was no cost-free way of achieving change.
As we start a new year and political season, I hope that one of Stormont’s main resolutions is to be less popular, which is a good thing if it is in the service of achieving meaningful reform.
We have two years to do this before entering another cycle of elections.
Let’s make 2025 the year where motions become a bad dream and plans for reform become the norm.