The SDLP Opposition has unveiled a comprehensive reform blueprint to overhaul Stormont, improve democratic oversight and end the recurring crises that have hampered devolved government in recent decades.

The report, Politics for the Common Good: Beyond Constant Crisis, outlines a three-stage programme: immediate steps to enhance scrutiny and accountability; a broader assessment of power-sharing in the next Assembly mandate; and a longer-term plan for more effective, responsive governance.

Key immediate measures proposed include preventing any single party from bringing down the Executive by passing nominations for First Minister or deputy First Minister to the next eligible party, establishing Joint First Ministers, reforming how the Assembly Speaker is elected and removing additional Executive vetoes introduced under the St Andrews Agreement. The party also proposes stronger collective government by linking Executive formation to an agreed Programme for Government and placing a statutory duty on Ministers and departments to collaborate on shared priorities. Communities would be given greater influence over decisions on public investment, regeneration and the delivery of services.

Over the longer term, the SDLP wants a reassessment of power-sharing, including the potential for voluntary coalitions and less reliance on community designation, while retaining protections for rights, equality and political identities. The party is also exploring moving the Northern Ireland Assembly to an accessible, repurposed site in Belfast city centre by the end of the next mandate and taking Assembly proceedings to towns and cities across Northern Ireland. The report urges the UK and Irish Governments to quickly convene a focused process to agree urgent institutional reforms before the next Assembly election, followed by a wider programme of political and civic engagement during the next mandate.

Launching the plan, SDLP Leader Claire Hanna MP said: "Politics isn't delivering for people in Northern Ireland, and as we head towards another election in May, another five years of the same paralysis and decay isn't something we should impose upon the generations of young people coming up behind us.

"The Good Friday Agreement created the foundations for peace and partnership, but it was never intended to be the final destination for our politics. The recent events at Garvaghy Road have reminded us how much work remains undone in building a genuinely reconciled society here.

"For those of us who believe in a New Ireland, making this place work better today and preparing for constitutional change are not competing ambitions. They are part of the same responsibility.

"We have spent too long asking how to keep the institutions standing. It is time to ask how we make them worth having."

Leader of the Opposition Matthew O'Toole MLA said: "We have an Executive that cannot agree a Budget, public services under enormous pressure and political parties increasingly consumed by arguments about who holds power rather than what they intend to do with it.

"Stormont has become a byword for political dysfunction. We need to end the ability of a single party to collapse government, remove unnecessary vetoes and ensure Ministers are accountable for the decisions they make.

"Our proposals would link the Programme for Government to the Budget, strengthen accountability and bring the Assembly closer to the people it serves, including through relocating it to the heart of Belfast.

"We don't just want institutions that are harder to collapse. We want government that actually works."

The full Politics for the Common Good: Beyond Constant Crisis report is available at: www.sdlp.ie/politics_for_the_common_good