HOUSE prices in Northern Ireland rose almost 10% over the past 12 months, six times faster than the UK average, according to the latest figures from Nationwide.

This is very different to the property boom two decades ago, when soaring prices were accompanied by unprecedented levels of construction.

Up to 15,000 houses were completed every year, half as many again as required to meet long-term need.

Today, construction has fallen to under 6,000 a year, the lowest since the late 1950s. Prices are being forced up by lack of supply, not by exuberant demand.

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Overloaded sewers and a hapless planning system are the primary culprits, although there are other significant problems with the private and social housing sectors.

Rather than a boom that will bust, we are in a squeeze that will keep on squeezing until these problems are fixed.

Even the good news is bad on this front. Northern Ireland remains the most affordable region by some margin – the only part of the UK where the average house costs less than five times the average wage – and we have the fastest-rising wages in the UK.

So we can continue desperately outbidding each other for unavailable housing for the foreseeable future.

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THE chief executive of Sport NI stood down last year, it has emerged, after a two-year absence.

She had previously been dismissed in 2015 and reinstated in 2017, so this saga has lasted over a decade and it is not finished yet – the hunt is still on for a successor.

When dysfunction becomes this protracted, the rights and wrongs of individual disputes scarcely matter compared to the wider impact of a failing public body.

In 2020, an Audit Office report found governance problems at Sport NI had cost the taxpayer £1.5m. Nor is this an isolated case.

Other quangos have seized up for years due to internal arguments and the inability of Stormont........

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