Who cares? A report on Northern Ireland’s Political Scene

I’ve been helpfully pointed (via a BBC story) to a recent Ipsos Mori Report for The Assembly on Public Attitudes.

Key points

– 38% of respondents identified themselves as neither Unionist or Nationalist (49% in the 16-34 age group)

– NI has a lower level of political activists (9%) than GB (11%)

– Only 40% are interested in The Assembly and only 25% know a fair bit about it.  40% couldn’t name one of their local MLAs

– Only around half say that they are very likely to vote in the next election

There is an unsurprising disparity in terms of age:

– 23% of 16-34 year olds said they were fairly or very interested in The Assembly, compared with 50% of over 45s

– 15% of 16-34 year olds said they know a fair amount about The Assembly compared with 34% for over 55s

– 13% of 16-34 year olds have contacted an MLA since the 2007 elections, compared with 20% of over 35s

So, it seems that in Northern Ireland, we’re disinterested in mainstream politics, and that our young adults are even more so.

But are we ignoring ‘Big P’ Politics (party politics) in favour of ‘small p’ politics (protests, petitions and facebook groups)?

Are we apathetic? Or alienated?

A slimmer Executive?

On Monday, a debate was had in Private Members’ Business to restructure the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, essentially to reduce the disproportionate number of representatives that Northern Ireland has.  The UUP motion (following Cameron’s example of reform?) was supported by Alliance and the DUP, an ammendment was propsed by the SDLP and it was rejected by SF. 

The motion:

That this Assembly supports, in principle, the restructuring of the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government; and calls on the First Minister and deputy First Minister to update the Assembly on the proposals for the creation of an Efficiency Review Panel, as announced on 9 April 2009, and to agree to implement a review and produce a report on the issue of the number of MLAs and government Departments in the next Assembly, within the next six months.

You can read the transcript of the debate here