DEAR Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly.

You have rightly said that people are angry at the proposed £14,000 annual pay rise for MLAs, but you offered only a partial explanation for that anger.

Public annoyance is not just based on income inequality between MLAs and other occupations such as nursing.

It stems significantly from the fact that MLAs are seen as being paid for achieving so little – indeed, some would argue that despite the salaries and generous expenses, Stormont has made life worse for many of us.

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Of course, none of this is the personal fault of either of you, but you are the heads of government here and that means the buck stops with both of you politically.

So in terms of governance, you are responsible for resolving our many difficulties including: pothole-ridden roads; five-year waiting lists for health care; the 110,000 children in poverty; the 29,000 homeless households on the social housing waiting list; the estimated 100 food banks and the thousands who rely on them; the A5; the crumbling school buildings; the pollution of Lough Neagh, and a host of other problems, which reflect the growing social and economic inequality in our society.

There is little evidence that you intend to sort out any of those issues.

This year, the Assembly has spent just nine minutes debating legislation. This newspaper has reported that in the past two years, MLAs have passed 10 pieces of legislation, while the Scottish parliament has passed 31.

So Stormont is understandably seen by many as a country club for the political elite, who show little understanding of life beyond the club’s carefully manicured lawns.

MLAs’ membership of the club costs about £12 million annually in claimed expenses – paid for by the public.

“Work” in Stormont appears to mean reading inane, party-written statements, which trigger an exchange of sectarian insults, before the parties go off together to eat their subsidised meals in a dining room which recently cost £520,000 to refurbish.

MLAs took a month off at Christmas and, for five of the past nine years, they sat at home while drawing an income.

You have not just generated public anger, you have created public disgust.

Last year, in your Programme for Government (PfG), you promised you would work for us. Have you?

For example, you said: “We need to tackle the problems at Lough Neagh urgently.”

When Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir published an excellent plan to tackle the issue, your two parties distanced themselves from it – urgently.

The PfG contained no budget to explain how it would be financed and the Fiscal Council has said British government bail-outs risk ‘normalising’ serious financial mismanagement. Are MLAs worth a pay increase in that context?

Last June, after a delay of 19 years, you produced an anti-poverty “strategy”, which did not have a single measurable objective, or one deadline date.

It said, for example, that family break-up can cause poverty and offered the solution that “the benefits of a good family structure will be promoted”.

That document was an insult to those in poverty and it should be a cause of embarrassment to both of you.

Unless you improve Stormont’s performance, public anger will continue to grow.

So here’s an idea. Leave MLAs’ £53,000 basic salary in place and introduce performance-related pay for every improvement they make to society. Let’s call it, “No progress, no pay increase.”

This idea is based on a positive reward system, rather than a punishment-based model, which might suggest that if Stormont does not clean up Lough Neagh, for example, MLAs should be forced to bathe in it every week.

This idea is based on a positive reward system, rather than a punishment-based model, which might suggest that if Stormont does not clean up Lough Neagh, for example, MLAs should be forced to bathe in it every week

There would probably be widespread public support for that suggestion, but this column could not possibly condone such a scandalous idea (well, just a bit).

So if the Executive delivers pothole-free roads, abolishes child poverty, or ends the need for food banks, MLAs will get a bonus on top of their present salary.

You might then have your photographs taken together as the last food bank closes down, or welcoming the last victim of child poverty to Stormont.

That would be a welcome change from other photographs you have had taken.

Of course, if performance-related pay sounds too much like hard work, you can always soothe the public anger with old-fashioned sectarianism – blame the other side for our troubles as next year’s election draws near. Waving a flag cures all Stormont’s failings.

So what’s it to be: continued public anger, performance-related pay, or the same old sectarian politics?

Most people would think they already know the answer.

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