Mr. John McCallister:

They are the only two parties to have signed up but at the moment they are the only ones that need to sign up. They know that the smaller parties do not have to deliver any of this. They are the parties with the votes. Even in a cross-community vote like a budget that we have now, the DUP and Sinn Féin have the numbers to do that. That is why I want to move to weighted majority. That could change if unionism fractures somewhat. The DUP only needs to lose something like five seats to the Ulster Unionist Party, UUP, for example, and suddenly the UUP could lock any cross-community votes and we could end up not having a budget. That changes the dynamic, as would not being able to get all their pieces of government business done.

One is always trying to find a balance between a government having the right to get its business through and a protection mechanism that says: "Wait, the government must think again about this". For example, in Westminster the House of Lords voted down tax credits, and the government thought again and changed its mind on it. That is the balance we are trying to strike, between sticking strictly with the principles of the Good Friday Agreement and the genuine power sharing, trust and consensus that we want to build with allowing opposition or non-government parties to start to co-operate and develop a policy agenda that they can take to the electorate, so they can look at times like an alternative government. That is a great way of putting pressure on a government.

For too long in Northern Ireland there have been no political consequences for the failure to deliver on educational under-achievement, health, housing or infrastructure. Even in the recent political crisis nobody was particularly bothered if there was an election, because they knew most of the same people would be back doing the same things. Therefore, there are no political consequences. The Republic, however, could not have got through the last eight or nine years without a sense of collective Cabinet government or the Government acting as, and looking like, one unit, with some very difficult decisions to be made.