Published date:
The Missing Middle: A System Delivery Risk Across Northern Ireland Government
This report was prepared in advance of the Assembly debate on special school summer schemes on 31 March 2026 and was issued to the Assembly Committee for Education and to a number of Members of the Legislative Assembly.
Although prompted by the events surrounding this year's special school summer schemes, the report concludes that those events should be understood not simply as a service-specific issue, but as evidence of a wider cross-government delivery risk where responsibility is shared across public systems.
The report welcomes the resolution that enabled the schemes to proceed. It also concludes, however, that resolution alone cannot provide assurance that similar uncertainty will not arise again. Reliable delivery requires operational alignment to be secured in advance, rather than achieved only after difficulties emerge.