Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I welcome to the meeting from the Executive Office (TEO) Jaclyn Richardson, interim director of Programme for Government (PFG); and Patrick Gallagher, head of delivery unit. Thank you for sending a briefing paper in advance. Would you like to go ahead and make some introductory remarks?

Ms Jaclyn Richardson (The Executive Office): No problem. Thanks very much for the opportunity to appear in front of you today. I will start by providing a bit of background and update on the Programme for Government, and then Patrick will provide an update on the delivery unit, if you are happy with that.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes.

Ms Richardson: You are well versed in it, but I will provide a bit of background. The Programme for Government was agreed by the Executive on 27 February 2025 and launched on 3 March 2025. It is the first PFG to be agreed in 13 years, which is a positive milestone for Northern Ireland. It focuses on nine key priorities: growing a competitive and sustainable economy; expanding access to high-quality childcare; reducing health waiting times; strengthening support for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN); ending violence against women and girls; increasing the availability of social and affordable housing; creating safer communities; protecting Lough Neagh and the wider environment; and driving reform and transformation across public services. The Executive Office PFG team works with all the Departments across the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS). We monitor delivery across each of the PFG priorities and ensure that progress is being reported transparently.

On 26 February 2026, the Executive received an update on progress on the PFG priorities in this mandate. The progress was up to 31 December 2025. I will not go into detail, but I will tell you about a few of the key achievements. On the growing a globally competitive and sustainable economy priority, more than £20 million has now been invested in a skills fund to support more than 17,000 individuals and 1,100 employers. That is mainly aimed at the economically inactive and those who find it hard to access opportunities. Under the priority to deliver more affordable, accessible and high-quality early learning and childcare, £55 million has been invested in early learning and childcare provision, which has led to 2,500 additional full-time preschool education places. More than 25,000 children have benefited from the childcare subsidy scheme. With the cut in health waiting times, there have been 188,876 additional outpatient appointments, diagnostic tests and inpatient procedures, which is helping to reduce waiting lists and improve access to care. The waiting lists for endoscopies, for example, have been reduced by 63% from their peak in June 2022.

More than £5 million has been invested in community-based action to end violence against women and girls, which, I know, you had a session on last week. Under the priority of better support for children and young people with special educational needs, in this financial year, 120 special educational needs-specific accredited training places in five further education colleges have been offered to assist in preschool and foundation stages. Under the priority to provide more social, affordable and sustainable housing, 5,300 additional properties have been able to connect to the waste water infrastructure. An Executive-approved housing supply strategy was launched in December 2024, and the warm healthy homes strategy was launched in February 2026. In 2025-26, £83·7 million has been allocated to the Supporting People programme, which is providing housing-related support to help 20,000 individuals and families to live independently. On 9 December 2025, the Executive allocated £7 million to meet the full cost of year 1 of the PSNI workforce recovery plan, which is helping to build safer communities. On the protecting Lough Neagh and the environment priority, delivery is well under way on the 37 action points: 15 have been delivered, and progress is being made on the other 22. Finally, in June 2025, the reform and transformation of public services established the Office of AI and Digital, which is driving innovation.

Those are just a few notable achievements that demonstrate the progress across the PFG priorities and moving us forward. The Executive Budget is also closely aligned with the PFG. In the current financial year, 42% of the resource Budget, totalling approximately £6·9 billion, and 78% of the capital Budget, totalling £2 billion, are contributing directly to the delivery of the PFG priorities. We are all aware that the current fiscal environment is challenging.

I will give a bit of background to the well-being framework, which, I am sure, you are all familiar with. It sits alongside the Programme for Government but looks at the longer-term views of the various elements. There are 52 indicators that can be broken down by 10 domains or by each of our missions to demonstrate what is being achieved in the longer term. They provide a benchmark that can help us to consider the real impact that the policies are having on people's quality of life. The PFG recognises now more than ever that innovative approaches underpinned by a commitment to reform and transformation are essential. By doing things differently, the PFG aims to deliver real and measurable improvements in service delivery across the Executive's priorities for citizens.

That is a broad-spec scoop of where we are. I will pass over to Patrick, and then we will be happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you very much. Go ahead please, Patrick.

Mr Patrick Gallagher (The Executive Office): Thank you very much for the invitation to come here today.

I know that there has been a lot of interest in the delivery unit among Committee members, the wider Assembly and the public, so, hopefully, I can help clarify our role a little. To start, we have to go back to Tony Blair's Government and the original delivery unit guru, who, as members may know, was Sir Michael Barber. Since then, many Governments around the world have seen the success of his approach and sought to copy it, but not all of them have achieved the same outcomes. An important reason for that is that Barber's approach was specific to its context, its environment and its constitutional reality. Of course, elements of Barber's methods, including the wonderful "deliverology" word that he coined, can and should be replicated elsewhere, but it is not as simple as lifting exactly what he did and inserting it into a different system.

Members will, of course, be aware that our constitutional situation is different from that in Whitehall. While collective responsibility is a fundamental convention of the British constitution, we have a mandatory coalition. That does not mean that we cannot apply the same good practice to delivery, including the "deliverology" concepts of targets, trajectories, delivery plans and reporting routines — we can and do do that — but it means that we have to adapt our approach to ensure that it works for us. It is important to note that, while there have been central units across the NICS before, some of which did similar things, this is a relatively new concept for us. There will clearly be some iterations and back and forth before we get it right. The First Minister and deputy First Minister have been clear that doing what we have always done is not an option, given the challenges that we all face, but change is not always guaranteed to work out first time. We have to test the new approach; learn what works and does not work; adapt; and try again.

As you will know, the first priority agreed by the Executive for the delivery unit was to deal with health waiting lists. We have had detailed engagement with colleagues in the Department of Health to get an insight into the huge amount of work that they have done to develop and implement the Health and Social Care (HSC) reset plan and into the dedication of all those in the health service who are trying to deliver better services to people. As a small unit, we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot do and where we can best add value, rather than spreading ourselves too thinly by trying to cover everything that Health is doing on waiting lists. We have, therefore, focused on the HSC reset plan by monitoring and supporting the delivery of various transformation projects, including the roll-out of multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) in GP practices. That is a core element of the really necessary wider health reforms, which are aimed at strengthening early intervention and prevention, shifting care closer to home and supporting the development of a neighbourhood model of care to take the pressure off our overstretched hospitals.

We continue to support the public-sector transformation board to identify further projects that will make a real difference to citizens, some of which are in health and others related to the wider determinants of health. Our role in driving the delivery of those transformation projects across the system gives us an oversight of all the connections and helps us to start tackling the wider challenges of siloed working that we all grapple with. We are also actively exploring other areas where we can add value, focusing on issues where several Departments are involved but there is no clear lead. That is in the early stages, but there is a good opportunity there for the delivery unit to grasp some of the issues, bring Departments together, unstick problems and drive delivery.

To summarise, we currently have three broad strands of work. First, there are the specific PFG priorities identified by the Executive, with an initial focus on health waiting lists. The second is the wider priority of reform and transformation, including through the transformation fund and transformation projects. The third is the more specific, discrete cross-cutting issues. As I said, it is a relatively new approach, so I cannot guarantee that everything that we try will work immediately, but we will keep trying until we get there.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you very much, Patrick. I really appreciate the briefing, and I do not envy the mountain of work that is in front of you.

We politicians are out in our constituencies quite a bit. In my South Belfast constituency, there are a lot of people who work in the medical profession. They often say that they know what needs to be fixed and what needs to happen in our hospitals, our theatres etc. The Department of Health has brought in Professor Mark Taylor to look at waiting lists. Over and above the front-line experts such as Mark, who has been around for many years and is a very experienced and capable man, what can the delivery unit bring to that? What can the unit add to it?

Mr Gallagher: That is a good question. It goes back to Michael Barber's approach that a delivery unit does not come in and tell the Departments what to do. It does not come in and say, "You're doing it all wrong. We're the new experts. This is the way it should be". Barber's approach was always that you start by checking that there is a plan, by making sure that the plan is up to scratch and by testing the targets and trajectories, which we can do. He also said that you have to take nothing to do with budgets and assume that Departments have the money to do what they want to do. That is more difficult in our scenario, because, as we know, that is not necessarily the case for Health or any of our Departments.

We have had a huge number of engagements with Health. We have met Professor Taylor a lot. We have gone to the departmental board and met the permanent secretary. Their advice was, "Health is a big Department. It is scrutinised by the Audit Office and the Health Committee. All the trusts have their own scrutiny procedures. You need to do something that will really make a difference". We decided to link the two — waiting lists and reform and transformation — and really focus on driving one project. I am sure that people in the multidisciplinary teams think that they have had all the bad luck, because they get TEO on their back as well as Health. However, there is a method to that: first, we can apply those "deliverology" concepts and make sure that delivery happens, because they also have to be accountable to the transformation board; and, secondly, we can make connections with other projects that are either already being funded or are coming on stream, about which there will, hopefully, be announcements soon.

That, in short, is what we are doing on waiting lists. Waiting lists is a big concept, but, if you break it down, you realise that, exactly as you said, a lot of good people are doing a lot of good things in hospitals. We are not going to go in and replicate that; we will go into a specific and important area. If we can really have an impact on driving the multidisciplinary teams, which are doing a great job already, we will shift care away from hospitals and take pressure off GPs. That will mean that people are seen more quickly: rather than having to wait for a GP appointment and going weeks later to a physio, they will be straight in.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I appreciate that. In many ways, the Bengoa principles underpin all of that. There was his report and the subsequent Health report. A lot of that predates what you are doing. What has held up the multidisciplinary teams has been funding and resources. There has been a will in the Department; it has always been about funding. The unit has such a small team: one grade 5, two grade 7s and an executive officer 2 (EO2).

Mr Gallagher: We have added a staff officer since then.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): What are the challenges when it comes to feeling that you have the authority of the Executive in order to be listened to by people who have been working at this for a decade or more?

Mr Gallagher: The key thing is to acknowledge that people have been doing a huge amount of work in really difficult circumstances. We are not going to come along and tell them what to do. Equally, I think that everyone recognises that, sometimes, someone looking in from the outside can help. They can come with a different perspective. A non-expert might spot something obvious that the experts have missed.

When the Executive came back, Ministers secured money to drive transformation. We can really get stuck into that role. That funding was received not from the Health budget but from a central Executive pot, so it has to be accounted for slightly differently. That gives us levers to pull. It is not about finding something to do; it is about making connections with the other areas of work, which will lead to doing things differently in Health. There will also be different learnings in how to apply behavioural science and change management and how to bring in data, digital and AI. You do not want those learnings to be kept in one project; you want them to be shared. The initial test cases are the six transformation projects that are under way. I hope that more will be funded soon and come within our remit and that we will be driving a large number of projects. It will be on us to make those connections and make sure that it is a programme of transformation, rather than there just being discrete projects in each individual Department.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): The Strategic Investment Board (SIB) has a role, and resources are allocated to it. How do you interact with SIB? How do you work with it? Is there duplication? Do you have your own swim lane?

Mr Gallagher: We have had engagement. SIB is probably more on the capital infrastructure side of things. That may be simplifying things a bit too much, but, if I were to give a one-sentence answer, it would be that SIB is more on capital infrastructure. We are new, while SIB has been around for longer. We are trying to cover transformation projects. There will be work with SIB, especially when it comes to accessing expertise; there is a lot of expertise in SIB. We have been engaging with it on where we can co-opt people and bring people in in order to share learning. It is still early days, but SIB is listed on the whiteboard as one of the key organisations that we need to work with.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you.

Mr Dickson: Thank you. It is difficult to understand the concept of what you are trying to achieve, but what you have explained to us has been helpful. It would be lovely if you were policing all of the nine priorities of the Programme for Government, but you are not.

I applaud your choice of area. How did you choose to concentrate on the specific area of health waiting lists?

Mr Gallagher: Maybe Jaclyn can come in on the nine priorities. Our two divisions work closely. Jaclyn's has the overview of all nine, and we work specifically on two. I have been in this position since September 2025. The decision to focus on waiting lists was made before that; I think that it was in May or June 2025 that FM, DFM and the Executive decided, "Look, this is the thing that's going to affect nearly everybody. Everybody knows somebody who is on a waiting list. We are looking to make a real difference to people's lives, and this cuts across everybody in society". I do not know whether there was much thought other than that this was one of our serious priorities — not that the PFG priorities are listed in order. Jaclyn would shout at me: all nine are priorities. However, this is one that, we thought, we could focus on. That work and seeing the connections with the multidisciplinary teams provides the opportunity for the transformation projects to start working with other Departments and prove the concept, basically, with a relatively small fund of £235 million. Who knows where you go from there?

Mr Dickson: To what extent is the work to monitor, observe and collaborate with the Department of Health on driving down waiting lists a desktop exercise for you? Does the Department feed statistics to you and you crunch those numbers? To what extent do you give advice, as opposed to simply reporting the facts of the situations that the Department finds itself in?

Mr Gallagher: Waiting lists are a massive issue. As the Chair said, we are a small team. We had sessions with Professor Taylor and the permanent secretary, and we supported FM and DFM in meetings with the Health Minister. That was before I came, but the delivery unit officials were involved in that. That work looked at the big picture. We asked for statistics and sent a list of questions, such as, "Are you doing this?". There was a lot of desk research on such questions as, "What are they doing in Wales?", "What are they doing in Scotland?", "What are they doing in the Republic?", while recognising that the health systems are different. We asked questions around triaging; incentives and disincentives for trusts; the use of AI; use of data; interrogation of data to change waiting lists; and validation of waiting lists. There were a lot of questions from desk research, and there was a lot of engagement. Very little new came up, which provided assurance. The Department was aware of those issues. That is not to say that it has been fixed, because it is a huge body of work, and the Department is working on it. However, there was enough in the huge amount of work that Health was doing that we did not want to interfere and, maybe, not add value. Therefore, we thought, "The transformation projects are new for Health, and Health is trying to expand them. There is money attached, which brings levers with it. We can apply the classic delivery unit concept to help drive those projects". All the credit for those goes to the multidisciplinary teams and the teams in Health that are driving them. However, we thought that, if we could add a little to that, that would make a bigger difference than what difference would be made if we spread ourselves thinly over all of the wider stuff.

Mr Dickson: You give feedback to the people you work with. The early indications are that the waiting lists are coming down — for endoscopies, for instance, as you mentioned. That is positive. To what extent are you giving validation to the people you work with and helping them to deliver those new figures?

Mr Gallagher: There is almost a two-way process of validation and assurance. We started looking at this. As we said, we recognise the expertise in Health. The permanent secretary has probably been working in healthcare since before I was born, so you want to go in with an understanding of the levels of expertise that are there. The classic delivery unit "deliverology" approach is one of, "Have they got a plan? Are there targets? Are there trajectories? Are they working to the plan?". All of that is supposed to be set aside from budget. Budget is a massive factor for us. We are not the Department of Finance — we are not going to get into that — and we try to set budget aside as much as possible.

We have had really good sessions with Health. We have sat down with special advisers, brought in senior people from Health, worked through it and said, "Is there a plan? We are not asking if it is all fixed, but are you going in the right direction? Are you doing something? Can we be assured that that is not the area that we need to focus on?". That was done, and there was good assurance both ways. Equally, it takes a lot of time and energy for people to deliver reports to me. They are busy people, and that is not always a good use of their time or my time. If we focus on one element — the shift left, the move into the community and multidisciplinary teams — that is where we can make the biggest difference to wider waiting lists.

Mr Dickson: Is there publicly available information from which you can extract the data, without having to upset clinicians and other people by asking them to provide you with more information ?

Mr Gallagher: Absolutely. The My Waiting Times NI website is excellent. The Department updates that every month. We look at that and do our own assessment of what is going up, what is going down and what is changing, and we ask questions on that. That covers everything that Health does on waiting lists. We ask whether that is the best approach for us.

Mr Dickson: If the carrot is recognising the work that is being done and telling people that they have made improvements, what stick do you have, at the end of the day, for when things do not go well?

Mr Gallagher: Ultimately, we report to the First Minister and deputy First Minister, who chair the Executive. That is why the delivery unit is positioned in TEO. The First Minister and deputy First Minister meet the Health Minister as and when they need to, and we support them in those meetings. FM and DFM have the ability to make decisions and ask questions at Executive level. We have a good, close relationship with FM and DFM: we report to them. We meet junior Ministers monthly and spads even more frequently to make sure that they are updated on what is going on.

To go back to the point that I made about our constitutional arrangements, each Department is its own body corporate — its own legal entity. We do not have the levers that Whitehall has, but that does not mean that there are no levers. Reporting to FM and DFM is our biggest lever.

Mr Dickson: It is amazingly good that, working in collaboration with that group of people, you have managed to drive down waiting lists. When you lift your eyes and look across the breadth of the Programme for Government, what do you see the unit doing, going forward? Will it just be tiny things? You could be long since retired by the time you would get out of the Department of Health brief, but how do you lift your eyes to look to the horizon for all the areas in the Programme for Government?

Mr Gallagher: I would be embarrassed to take any credit for driving down the waiting lists. There are people in Health who have been doing the job for a long time.

Mr Dickson: I said that you were working with them.

Mr Gallagher: The deputy First Minister talks about being the little tugboat that helps to steer the ship around the port, but we would not want them to think that we are coming in to take the credit.

The transformation work is almost like the seed funding for how to change things. We have been involved in really good projects from designing the call, that call going out, assessing the projects and working out all the structure. There is a board chaired by the head of the Civil Service and made up of the NIO permanent secretary, the Chief Scientific and Technology Adviser (CSTA) and two experienced independent members. There is good advice and expertise there, but the decision on what is funded is ultimately for the Finance Minister and the Executive.

The team is dedicated to looking at those projects from start to finish. It is a four-year programme. The intention is that we will be there the whole way through and that, as I said, we will make the connections whereby they share expertise and learn from one another. Two projects may come up that appear to have nothing to do with each other, but they may be fighting to recruit the same person. In such a case, we could look at whether there is something that could be done, given the limited workforce, to share a person or whether we could have a central resource that we could access and put into projects. We are looking at things like that. The unit will be one small part of that change.

Mr Dickson: Thank you.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you. How were the six projects chosen from the Programme for Government?

Mr Gallagher: The transformation projects?

Ms Ní Chuilín: Uh-huh.

Mr Gallagher: There were negotiations with the Treasury —.

Ms Ní Chuilín: They are all good, but I am just wondering how they were chosen.

Mr Gallagher: There was an open call.

Mr Brett: The transformation board.

Mr Gallagher: Yes. The £235 million was secured by Ministers from negotiations with Treasury, and four transformations were ring-fenced. That is why there is UK Government representation. We then designed a call, and Departments bid for that, putting in what, they thought, were the best projects. That was assessed, and the board made a recommendation. The Finance Minister brought that recommendation to the Executive, and the Executive agreed what would go forward. Needless to say, there are far more good ideas for projects than there is money available. It is not easy, but that is a good problem to have.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Absolutely. Do you know what money went to the private sector to reduce the health waiting lists?

Mr Gallagher: As I said, we are not involved specifically in budgets.

Ms Ní Chuilín: OK.

Mr Gallagher: That would get in the way of being able to support, but it is also because we would be stepping on toes. DOF and the Audit Office have a clear role on budgets, so delivery units would not have specific information on that.

Ms Ní Chuilín: There is stuff in your submission about additional elective care appointments, ongoing work on Lough Neagh and the ending violence against women and girls strategy. I also see stuff in there from Education about special educational needs.

Given that it is the first time that it has been a Programme for Government priority, is there anything more coming for housing?

Ms Richardson: As the Committee is aware, reporting on the Programme for Government is a work in progress. An annual report will be published in May that will give a breakdown of what is being delivered under the nine priorities. It will also provide an update on "Building New Foundations" in the Programme for Government. A lot of good stuff is being done on housing. There is the housing supply strategy and the warm healthy homes scheme. The collaborative working that unlocked waste water capacity for an extra 5,300 homes has been key. The annual report will provide a full update on everything that has happened in this financial year.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I appreciate that you are saying that Departments are promoting that work themselves through special advisers and intensive working.

There is funding to expand multidisciplinary teams in GP practices, which is welcome. I know that Pam was the Bill's sponsor, but, on the subject of the list of children waiting for an autism diagnosis, there are a significant number of children on individual education plans (IEPs) in preparation for getting an assessment and then receiving a diagnosis. It is about getting children's needs recognised in nursery school, but some of them are not being assessed until post-primary school. That is horrendous for them, and it is having a massive impact.

All the other stuff is great, such as the increase in the number of houses that can be built because of the unlocking of waste water capacity. I know that you are not dealing with budgets, but, when you talk about multidisciplinary teams, you need to be more specific, if at all possible, about what they hope to achieve. When we think about need and the waiting list for children and young people in particular to be seen by MDTs, it is all non-specific.

Mr Gallagher: The multidisciplinary team programme is a Department of Health project.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I understand that.

Mr Gallagher: We are monitoring it. We have the information to monitor it and drive it forward. It is about GP practices having physiotherapists, mental health practitioners, social workers and pharmacists. If people ring their GP and need to see a physio, they are currently given an appointment. By having a physio in the practice, the GP, the receptionist or the practice manager can say, "You can see the physio today". That speeds things up. It reduces the number of referrals and the need to go back. Having specialists there who are better placed to solve people's problems also frees up GPs' time. That is the concept. MDTs are in, I think, 30% of GP practices at the minute, and the purpose of the programme is to get to 100% within four years. We will look at the targets and make sure that GP practices are on the right trajectory to meet them in return for the transformation funding that they get.

Ms Ní Chuilín: In any further conversations with Department of Health officials, I would appreciate if you were to say that the subject was raised at Committee, because —

Mr Gallagher: Yes.

Ms Ní Chuilín: — that then has an impact on the Department of Education. It goes back and forth between the two Departments. The Department of Education can do nothing for those children without having received their diagnosis from the Department of Health. Those kids are being failed at present.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): When Carál asked about use of the private sector to reduce waiting lists, you said that you would sit down with the sector. What is your plan? I find it hard to believe that you do not have an idea of how much money has gone to the private sector to help drive down waiting lists.

Mr Gallagher: That is for the health service to do. New money has gone into resourcing.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes, but —.

Mr Gallagher: It is not something on which we are focusing, because waiting lists are so long. A team of five people are working on them. The resource is people, and it does not come with a lot of money. It is five people. Is our best use of resource to look at the ins and outs of that decision or at —?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): It is not about the decision but about how the outcome has been achieved if it was not through that use of resource.

Mr Gallagher: It has been a mixture. Our focus is on the long term, because the concept behind the delivery unit is not to achieve short-term turnarounds. That is why I said that we cannot take credit for that. If you look at Michael Barber's approach, it takes three or four years, and that is for something like a multidisciplinary programme. That is what is making the fundamental change over the long term. That is our focus.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. I just wanted to make that point.

Mr Gaston: You hailed this as the first Programme for Government in 13 years, but, when I flick through it from cover to cover, I see plenty of nice photographs and a glossy, warm booklet but few actual commitments for which we can hold the Executive accountable, even though such commitments were probably one of the main things that had to be agreed to get the Programme for Government in place.

One of the Programme for Government priorities is "Grow a Globally Competitive and Sustainable Economy". Under the heading, it is stated:

I understand why you are highlighting benefits and investments in key sectors, but, in the PFG delivery unit or the PFG team, is there a spreadsheet somewhere that captures the areas in the Programme for Government in which Ministers are not performing and where commitments are not being met, or do you look at just the positives?

Ms Richardson: We certainly do not look at just the positives. There are updates given on progress in general. We do not have the geographical data to know where progress is and is not happening. As we said, we know that £20 million is being spent from a skills fund, from which 17,000 individuals and 1,100 employers are benefiting. It was in the news recently that a wide range of people are benefiting from that fund. We know the types of people who are benefiting from it. We do not have the geographical breakdown, however.

Mr Gaston: I think of the 300 jobs that have been lost as a result of the US firm Cantor Fitzgerald not coming to Northern Ireland. Those jobs were meant to come here. The deal was done, and discussions were under way about how it was to be announced, but the firm then encountered the Minister for the Economy, who, during a critical meeting, made the deal collapse. Where in the Executive Office — in the Programme for Government delivery unit or in the PFG team — is such data being captured?

Ms Richardson: At that level, I take you back to what Patrick was saying about the Department of Health. A lot of that is Department for the Economy-related. We are focusing on Programme for Government delivery. I am not sure whether it is different for Patrick, but that is more for the Department for the Economy to answer than for me to answer today.

Mr Gaston: It is therefore a case of looking at the positives and perhaps not so much at the negatives.

I will move on another priority, which is "Protecting Lough Neagh and the Environment". I was going to call him the "Agriculture Minister", but "Environment Minister" may be more fitting. He gave a ministerial statement in the Chamber that detailed that 20 million tons of untreated sewage is going into our waterways each year. In the Programme for Government, the target for 2027 is this:

I do not need to look at science to know what is happening in Lough Neagh. Government data coming out of Northern Ireland Water (NIW), which is an arm's-length body of the Department for Infrastructure, shows that we are polluting our waterways. We do not need scientific data to establish why our waterways are in such poor shape. Is that something that is monitored by the Programme for Government delivery unit or the Programme for Government team?

Ms Richardson: We get updates on how the Lough Neagh action plan is progressing. We all know that the situation at Lough Neagh will not be sorted out quickly. There are actions to be completed by the end of the mandate, and we monitor at that level. As I said, we know that 15 action points have been delivered and that the other 22 are in the process of being delivered, but that is as much information as I am able to provide today.

Mr Gaston: Out of the millions of pounds that have been put in, has any money been invested in stopping Northern Ireland Water discharging into Lough Neagh?

Mr Gallagher: In my role, I look specifically at some projects, but, as has been discussed, I do not look at them as deeply as Departments themselves do. I will take the Department of Health as an example. We look at Health, so I will have a more in-depth knowledge of that Department than Jaclyn, who is looking at the whole PFG. I will not have as much knowledge as departmental officials will, however. The role of TEO is to draw together an agreed Programme for Government and agreed priorities for the Executive Office. Ministers have their specific priorities in their Department. Officials are closer to their Department's projects and are therefore better able to answer the detailed technical questions.

Mr Gaston: The planet is a big thing in the Programme for Government. It talks about the impact of climate change. What about the A5, the upgrade of which fell through because of our climate change targets? Where is that talked about?

Ms Richardson: The A5 is mentioned under "Building New Foundations". As I said, we are going out to the Departments to get updates on "Building New Foundations" at the minute, and an update will be provided in the annual report that we will publish in May. The A5 remains a priority project for the Executive, as it is in the Programme for Government.

Mr Gaston: It is still in there as a flagship priority, even though we are paying farmers, some for the second time, to reinstate land that was destroyed. Contractors destroyed potentially up to 2,000 acres of good farmland to turn it into a makeshift site for a road that was essentially struck down in court.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I am conscious of time.

Mr Gaston: May I ask one more question?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): One more, and then we will move on.

Ms Richardson: The A5 is mentioned on page 66 of the Programme for Government.

Mr Gaston: Yes. I am thinking about the planet and talking about the impact of climate change, but we also need to consider the impact of the climate targets that this place set and how the upgrade to that road was struck down because of them.

I am passionate about housebuilding. You mentioned the 5,300 new connections that have been accommodated within the waste water system, and that is welcome. Some 5,300 new homes can now be built because of additional capacity, but none of those homes is in villages such as Cullybackey or Broughshane, which cannot see any intensification of the network because of the overload that is there. Our construction industry and, as a result, housebuilding are grinding to a halt because there is not enough investment or enough capacity. Providing more housing is a key pillar of the Programme for Government for our construction industry. Where can I read or hear about how we can make sure that towns and villages that are currently closed to intensification can start to see light at the end of the tunnel? The Programme for Government covers 2024-27, so can we expect that in 2028 in the Programme for Government for the next mandate? What work is going ahead to ensure that construction can proceed so that new homes can be built in villages and towns that are currently closed to intensification because of insufficient waste water capacity?

Ms Richardson: It is an Executive document. We are here only to tell you about how it is being monitored. If that is something that you would like considered, it needs to be brought to the table for the next Programme for Government.

Mr Gaston: When we accentuate the positives, there also has to be realisation that, although the document is nice, warm and colourful with plenty of pictures, Executive delivery cannot be said to reflect that priority. That is my contribution, as the only member on the Committee who is in opposition.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): You are the only member in opposition present.

Mrs Cameron: Thank you, Patrick and Jaclyn, for giving of your time. I will ask a couple of questions about the PFG delivery unit. Please tell the Committee a bit more about the delivery unit and how it differs from other delivery units across the UK. You spoke, Patrick, about the concept behind it, so, for clarity, is it the intention to make short, sharp interventions, as opposed to hand-holding Departments?

Mr Gallagher: I will start with that. The intention is to look at reform and transformation with a particular focus on the Department of Health. It is a longer-term focus, but it will be on specific areas. It is not a case of saying, "Let's try to monitor a whole Department". We are also trying to look at the specific, discrete projects for which everyone is aware of something that needs to be done but that nobody owns, as they fall to three or four Departments. They all do a little bit of them. Again, we are trying to be realistic about what is achievable, so we are trying to start small.

We are talking to Belfast City Council about a project that involves working with vulnerable people. It cuts across the Department of Health, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and the Department for Communities. Everybody has something to do to help those people, but there is no joined-up ownership. That is a test — it may not work — but we consider it to be somewhere where the delivery unit, which is positioned in TEO under the First Minister and the deputy First Minister, could go in and grasp that project. That would be a short, sharp intervention, but the main body of our work involves doing long-term monitoring and driving delivery of reform and transformation, particularly in the Department of Health but also more widely.

As I said, the concept of delivery units started in the early 2000s under Michael Barber, who initially was a special adviser but then moved into the Civil Service. Perhaps there was a different dynamic there. Constitutionally, there is obviously collective government. The Prime Minister can say, "Jump", and Secretaries of State will say, "How high?". That has been the approach in England. There have been different iterations of delivery units over the years. There is the mission delivery unit in the Cabinet Office. We have talked to Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. They all have delivery divisions and delivery units that do slightly different things. Some are focused on doing short, sharp things, for, say, three months at a time. Some are focused on the long-term driving of delivery. Some, rather than focus on projects, are focused more on elevating the skills that Departments have to deliver. They therefore differ a bit. That is why we have had to determine what works in our context.

Mrs Cameron: I was listening to Professor Mark Taylor on the radio last week or whenever it was.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): It was recently, yes.

Mrs Cameron: I found it a positive listen. I really welcome any progress that we can make. There was some criticism of how the waiting lists had been shortened. The validation piece is really important, however. It is important to have the right statistics, even just to give people hope that, if they are on a waiting list, the list could get to them.

Mr Gallagher: Absolutely.

Mrs Cameron: That is really important. Do you want to say anything else about the waiting lists initiative? What do you plan to assist the Department of Health with next?

Mr Gallagher: Hopefully, there will be an announcement soon on more transformation projects. That is with the Executive for a decision. There is a draft allocation in the multi-year Budget for further transformation projects. Hopefully, depending on Executive announcements, there will be another suite of projects. Whether there are 12, 15 or 20 projects across all priorities and across all Departments, we will be at the centre. We will not do the work — the teams that are the experts on the ground will do it — but we will monitor, drive and support them, stepping in where needed and making the connections. That is the long-term plan. As I said at the start, a lot of those initiatives will be related either to the Department of Health or to the wider determinants of health. It is not just about fixing what that Department does in hospitals and GP surgeries but about fixing people's health in general. We all know the things that impact on people's health.

Mrs Cameron: Which of the nine PFG priorities are the most challenging?

Ms Richardson: They all have their own challenges in different ways. It probably depends on what day you ask me and what is happening in the world. At the minute, given the situation in the Middle East, the priority for the First Minister and the deputy First Minister is the safety and well-being of people from here who are there. As I said, we are gathering information for the annual report now. Once we have published it, we will make sure that you all get a copy of it. There may be more to come out about that.

Mrs Cameron: That is great. I also sit on the Committee for Communities, on which we have recently talked a lot about housing. I am really glad that housing is in the PFG as a priority. The Communities Committee has written to the Executive to say that funding needs to be earmarked to meet the targets that they have agreed. How do we ensure that funding follows the priority? It is OK to say, "Yes, we all agree that we need x number of houses to be built in the next three years", but how do we ensure that that is followed through on and that the funding follows? On the back of that, how are we monitoring progress, and how can the public monitor progress?

Ms Richardson: The Department of Finance sets the Budget. It produced a paper on aligning PFG priorities with spend in the Budget. I am not sure whether you saw a copy of that, but that is from where I got the figures for how much money has been ring-fenced. The Department plans for that to be a document that it will continue to update. Subject to the final Budget's being agreed, that piece of work will therefore be done again. I am sure that we can share the paper with you, if you think that is useful. It will also be annexed to or a summary of it will be in the annual report. That should provide you with some of the information.

Mrs Cameron: OK. I am aware that, on the basis of John O'Dowd's draft multi-year Budget, the housing allocation will build only half of what, the Executive said, they want to build and what they agreed to build. That is incredibly challenging. Do you want to come in, Patrick?

Mr Gallagher: No, it is OK.

Mrs Cameron: Sorry, I was not trying to chair the Committee. [Laughter.]

Mr Brett: Thank you very much for the presentation. Ultimately, the PFG is a political document agreed by the Executive, and it is not for you to defend. The people of Northern Ireland will have an opportunity to give their view on whether the Programme for Government has been delivered when they cast their vote at the ballot box next May. That is where the people of Northern Ireland will have their say on it.

I will talk about the delivery unit. Worked examples are always the best to examples to give, so I will give you a bit of homework, Patrick, if you do not mind. Multidisciplinary teams are vital if we are to transform waiting lists. In my constituency of North Belfast, an MDT was due to be rolled out at the Clifton Street practice, which is sited right beside the Westlink, but the space is far too small to host it. The team wants to move across the road to Girdwood to have the space for the multidisciplinary team. The Department for Communities owns that land, but it does not have the resources to transfer it to the Department of Health. DFC therefore asked Belfast City Council to do it on its behalf, but it does not have the resources to do it either, so the multidisciplinary team now cannot start work when it is meant to, on 1 April. Does the delivery unit have a role to play in getting people from all Departments who are meant to be working towards the same target together and saying, "Listen, guys, get your act together here. We need to get this done"?

Mr Gallagher: We have not been doing that, but it sounds like something that we should do. With multidisciplinary teams, that is the type of thing that we expect to come up. It takes a while to build trust and confidence for somebody to come to TEO and see us as being helpful. That is exactly the type of issue that arises.

I said that Belfast City Council had come to us about a project that involves working with vulnerable people. That is another project that we can consider. We are trying to manage expectations when it comes to how many things we can do, but, given that that project is linked, we will pick it up and see whether we can help.

Mr Brett: OK. Are you dealing with planning reform?

Mr Gallagher: Transforming planning is one of the projects.

Mr Brett: Are you working on that at the moment?

Mr Gallagher: It is one of the six funded projects that we will monitor.

Mr Brett: You say that you will be: have you not started to do that yet?

Mr Gallagher: We have, but it is in its early stages. Recruitment of new people has only started. The statutory powers in DFI can be used to speed up the planning process.

Mr Brett: No work has been done in the Department for Infrastructure on that yet.

Mr Gallagher: I do not have a full update in front of me, but the intention is that that will happen. The funding has only been in place for a while. There is lots to get in place, including business cases. We are also preparing our annual report, which will go to the Executive and be appended to the PFG report.

Mr Brett: Some £20·5 million has been allocated to the Department of Justice for speeding up justice. Under the current Minister, we have a situation in which court processing times are at an all-time high and barristers are on strike. Ultimately, victims are suffering as a result. How much of that £20·5 million has been spent on trying to speed up justice?

Mr Gallagher: That £20·5 million is for the four years of the project. I do not have the information with me, but I can get the figures. They are sitting on my desk. The allocation has been made to try to increase the ability to do out-of-court disposals by having discussions with the PSNI and the Public Prosecution Service so that cases do not have to go to court. We all know how long a case takes when it goes to court, but, if it can be disposed of out of court, that will speed up the court processing time. Those are the type of key performance indicators that we are asking DOJ for, and we will hopefully have them included in our annual report.

Mr Brett: One of the main aims is to clear the current case backlog in the courts. Since the funding was allocated to the Department of Justice, has the average time for someone to get a court date increased or decreased? Has the backlog increased or decreased?

Mr Gallagher: We have a request out for that data for the end-of-year report. I have not seen a recent copy of the Programme for Government report, but it will be in there.

Mr Brett: I will make an informed guess and say that the answer will be that the case backlog has increased. If we are being serious about —.

Mr Dickson: With barristers —.

Mr Brett: Do you want in, Deputy Chair?

Mr Dickson: I was just going to say that, with barristers on strike, that is a likely outcome.

Mr Brett: I really support the work that you are doing, Patrick, on delivery, which is vital. If, however, we are going to prioritise projects and award funding to them, the outcomes from them need to be seen, and I am not sure that you can say that about some that have been allocated funding to date. For the Department of Health projects, however, you certainly can say that. That is probably why you focused on that Department first, as that is to where your resources have gone. I encourage you now to look at those other two Departments. In the absence of planning reform, there is an inability to get things moving economically in Northern Ireland, while the court system is broken at present. Your help in trying to sort out both those issues would be much appreciated.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I think that that is us. Thank you. I really appreciate your time today, and the Committee looks forward to getting some updates on the delivery of the Programme for Government.

Ms Richardson: Thank you.

Mr Gallagher: Thank you.