The Assembly and Executive are not delivering for the people of Northern Ireland, as shown in our many social, economic and public service challenges. Pivotal's new report suggests structural changes that could help improve the workings of the institutions.

Across the Assembly and Executive, this report suggests a number of practical, achievable reforms which seek to increase scrutiny of ministers, unblock the persistent logjams which have plagued decision making, and put collaborative policy generation at the heart of government.

These changes are: the introduction of Bill Committees, resourcing the Official Opposition, changing the Assembly Business Diary and the election of the Speaker, changes to the D’Hondt process (including Justice, running the process as one for ministers and committee roles, and setting an Executive threshold), greater use of Executive sub-committees, enforcing the three-meeting rule on Executive business, and reinforcing the importance of the PfG, Budget and legislative programme.

These are changes around which we think there could be broad agreement. The report does not consider the removal of the ‘single-party veto’, which allows one of the two main parties to prevent the formation of or to collapse the Executive. While this veto does have a significant impact on the way the institutions operate, the lack of consensus between the main parties at present means this is unlikely to be a realistic option.

Read the full report below.