Detail Data

Open data is data that anyone can access, use or share. It can enable small businesses, citizens and researchers to develop resources which make crucial improvements to their communities. Open data, especially open government data, is a tremendous resource that is as yet largely untapped in Northern Ireland.

Open policy making helps civil servants create and deliver policy that meets the demands of a fast-paced and increasingly digital world by engaging with others outside of government. It means that policy is more informed and better designed for both government and users.

Here are the top 4 reasons why we call for open data and for the process of policy making to be open.

It will improve decision making

• Information is key to sound decision-making and efficient operations for governments. Open data and open policy making have the potential to transform decision-making in Northern Ireland. The most up to date guidance on policy making for government, ‘A Practical Guide to Policy Making In Northern Ireland’, was published in 2005. While this highlights the importance of engaging with external stakeholders there is no formal commitment to drive open policy making or the use of open data. We would like to see a policy process which incorporates openness be implemented in Northern Ireland to develop more informed and civic-driven policy.

It will increase government efficiency

• Open data can increase government efficiency. There are numerous examples of where governments have become more efficient as a result of publishing and using open data. The Dutch Ministry of Education published all of their education-related data online for re-use. Since then, the number of telephone enquiries they receive has decreased by 80%, reducing work-load and costs. NICVA would like to see the Northern Ireland government become more efficient at publishing and using open data.

It will drive economic growth and innovation

• There is strong evidence that open data drives economic growth and innovation. Open data has resulted in the emergence of new companies delivering new, innovative, data-rich services and older companies using open data to optimise their operations.  While a small number of organisations here already use open data to develop their business, we would like to see an increase in the creation of valuable new and innovative businesses, services and applications in Northern Ireland which will encourage economic growth.

It will increase transparency and engagement

• Across the world there is increasing demand on governments to be more transparent and accountable. Northern Ireland should be no different. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing. We would like to see the use of both open data and an open policy making process as a powerful tool to reform public services, foster innovation and empower citizens to engage with and scrutinize decision-making.

To open data and the policy making process the Northern Ireland Government should:

• Establish an Open Policy Making Team in the Executive Office.
• Ensure local and central government publish the data and evidence they have used to make policy decisions.
• Train local and central government staff in data publication.
• Make Land and Property Services NI Pointer Data open and freely available.
• Carry out a data audit to fill information gaps in key areas such as the economy and land ownership and use.
• Ensure that NI-specific data can be disaggregated from UK level government data.
• Ensure the Government Funders Database records all funding to voluntary and community organisations and is kept open to all

Director of Family Mediation NI Joan Davis was responding to Detail Data research that found almost half of all orders being made in Northern Ireland’s family courts are for ‘contact’ and ‘residence’ generally setting out which parent a child lives with and when they have contact with their other parent. The new findings have sparked calls for more use of mediation as an alternative to court action, while Detail Data has also gained rare access to family courts which has revealed the impact of proceedings on children.

Our examination of court data also uncovered errors in the Courts Service’s official Children Order statistics which record judges’ decisions affecting children’s lives and help frame planning. Figures covering a nine year period will now have to be amended.

Detail Data can today reveal more than 24,000 decisions impacting on thousands of children’s lives were made by judges over the last three years. We were also granted significant access to the family courts, which deal with sensitive issues, normally held in private, such as children being removed from their parents’ care and separated couples fighting over custody of their children. We obtained comprehensive statistics on family court rulings, known as Children Orders, made between September 2012 and August 2015 in response to Freedom of Information requests lodged with the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS).

An analysis of data from the Family Proceedings Court, Family Care Centre and High Court found that 10,206 contact and residence orders were made over the last three judicial years. Those orders can relate to more than one child.

Family Mediation NI, the largest provider of pre-court family mediation here, received government funding over the same period to assist 750 families reach agreement outside of the justice system.

Ms Davis said:

“The problem with the courts system is that it is being used to perpetuate family conflict inadvertently. It is an adversarial process by nature.The rest of Europe uses mediation as the default first option in family breakdown, and yet in Northern Ireland the default process is the courts system. in 2010 the Minister for Justice spoke about finding different ways of diverting parents away from the courts system. We are in 2016 and no additional money has come from any department.”

Ms Davis claimed that policy hasn’t kept pace with social change and the make-up of modern families with almost twice as many children (10,504) born to unmarried parents in 2014 compared to 1994 (5,337). The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency figures also show that the parents of 2,400 children (under the age of 18) divorced in 2013. She said:

“We urgently need policy makers to catch up with what's happening on the ground. The divorce figures don't give you the true picture because half of the people that come through these doors have never been legally married. We have an increase in casual relationships producing a child. We don't sit in judgment as to how this child came into the world but the law states under Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child that the child has the right to access to both parents.”

The Data

As a result of our research, errors in the Courts Service’s official Children Order statistics have come to light. The NICTS has initiated an immediate review of its data and said it will have to amend and republish figures covering a nine-year period. It has also confirmed to Detail Data that it is undertaking a consultation exercise and has proposed a new methodology of counting the number of Children Orders made by judges. NICTS provided us with an updated dataset, which it has said is accurate. It is those figures we are reporting on today.

The statistics relate to final orders, which are issued at the conclusion of court action. Each order can apply to more than one child (for example one order could relate to every child in a family). They cover both public law - involving individuals and the government such as a child being placed in the care of social services - and private law, which deals with relations between individuals such as couples unable to agree arrangements regarding their children following a relationship breakdown.

• In 2013/14 private law Children Orders cost £11.7million.
• Family Mediation NI receives just over £200,000 per year in government funding to facilitate pre-court mediation.
• The Courts Service budget has been cut by £4.5million (10.8%) since April 2014.
• The time taken to conclude private law cases has risen by more than a week to an average of six months. 22 cases took on average 16 months to conclude in one court.
• Family courts located at 14 venues across Northern Ireland sat in total for almost 15,000 hours in 5,432 sittings between September 2012 and August 2015.
• Up to 23,722 children were involved in concluded cases.
• Judges granted applications for 870 care orders over the three years to protect children at risk of significant harm. During that timeframe more than 2,600 children were placed in care.
• 20 orders for the recovery of a child were granted.
• 60 secure accommodation orders were made.
• Judges granted applications for 145 education supervision orders.

View Northern Ireland's Family Courts in a full screen map.

Mediation as an Alternative to Court

An appeal has also been made for the Executive - as the issue falls under the remit of three departments – health, justice and finance and personnel - to invest more money in mediation in an effort to encourage families to resolve their issues without court intervention. Family Mediation NI, which helps families and separating couples deal with disputes including drawing up a parenting agreement, has estimated that 70% of contact/residence disputes would benefit from mediated solutions. Charity Barnardo’s NI, which also provides pre-court mediation, wants to see a more constructive approach “to divert greater numbers of parents away from the courts”.

This story also examines the impact of cuts and public sector budgetary pressure. It also highlight the concerns about the length of time cases are taking to be resolved despite there being a no-delay principle enshrined in The Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 because delay “is likely to prejudice the welfare of the child”. The Family Justice Review of civil and family justice in Northern Ireland including better ways of dealing with cases of relationship breakdown involving children is also examined in this story as part of this story.

To access the full Detail Data story, by data journalist Lindsay Fergus, visit here.

Case studies on families experiences of the current system can be found here and here.

To access the data supporting this story, click here.

Detail Data has examined the payments distributed under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2013/14 to 38,006 recipients which included farmers and also other landowners or their representatives, rural businesses, community groups, councils and education boards. 

CAP is a system of subsidies and support programmes for agriculture operated by the European Union. CAP payments include direct funding, which is mainly a subsidy for farmers, and rural development grants which are also open to community groups. Some Rural Development Programme schemes are co-funded which means they include UK and EU funds.

The UK government publishes details of all direct payments and rural development funds paid out, as a result of a new European Regulation on transparency in CAP funding. 

Click here to view the data on the Detail Data Portal.

The analysis of the 2013/14 CAP figures shows:

• £266.3million was paid out in single farm payments and £83.1million in rural development funding: a total of £349.4million.
• Beneficiaries based in the Enniskillen area received the largest amount of CAP funding - £38.9million in total. This was followed by the Omagh area (£33.3million) and then the Ballymena area (£27.3million).
• The top ten town/city areas each received over £10million in EU payments – Enniskillen, Omagh, Ballymena, Newry, Dungannon, Armagh, Derry/Londonderry, Craigavon, Coleraine and Magherafelt. The majority of these towns/cities are west of Northern Ireland which is an area that historically struggles to attract as much funding as the east.
• Single farm payments to 36,707 beneficiaries ranged from £13.36 to £322,182.

It’s not just farmers who benefit from CAP funding. We also looked at the CAP funding awarded to community groups for the benefit of their local area.

The ARC Healthy Living Centre is a Fermanagh-based health and wellbeing charity and social enterprise. Its aim is to help the local community’s most vulnerable and rurally isolated people lead healthier and happier lives.

In 2013/14, ARC received £573,692 in rural development funding to build a centre in Irvinestown to provide services and health promotion activities for the local area.  The facility was part-funded by South West Action for Rural Development and also received financial support from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and the Public Health Agency.

ARC's chief executive officer Jenny Irvine said:

“The Rural Development Programme-funded project enabled us to have our child-based and adult services co-located on the one site but in different buildings.

“We have had a 20% increase in terms of our service usage since the new centre opened. It is exceptionally well used. We had over 15,000 service contacts through our buildings last year alone.

“It was good for our own confidence and credibility to successfully navigate the rigour of a European building project and to come in on time and within budget.” 

Aidan Campbell is policy and public affairs officer at Rural Community Network. He said:

“CAP funding is important to rural communities and especially to farmers as many farm businesses need the subsidy to remain viable. Some of that money is then recycled into other rural businesses as farmers spend it on inputs into their farm.

“The Rural Development Programme is an important source of funding for rural communities and has supported a wide range of service delivery and community infrastructure projects as well as encouraging farm diversification projects, supporting small rural businesses and developing tourism projects.

“If the UK does vote to leave the EU there are no guarantees that Westminster will match this level of funding to farmers or rural communities and we know that the Assembly block grant will be constrained for the foreseeable future.

“Another story by Detail Data showed that Invest NI spent £66m supporting local businesses in rural areas over three years. So money coming from Europe provides a much higher level of financial support to rural communities than the funding rural businesses receive from our main economic agency.

“However, the other point to remember is that CAP funding will reduce gradually anyway over the next ten years as the EU directs a greater proportion of the CAP budget to central and eastern European farmers where agriculture is in much greater need of modernisation.”

For more on this data story by Detail Data's Kathryn Torney, click here. 

To find the data on the Detail Data Portal, click here.

That is the warning issued today by the MS Society Northern Ireland who is calling for a “fundamental system change” to deal with a waiting list backlog and to ensure equal access to treatment and services for all patients.

The government targets are that no one should wait longer than 18 weeks for their first outpatient appointment and at least 60% of patients should wait no longer than nine weeks. The latest measure of performance for the quarter ending September 30th 2015 shows that Northern Ireland as a whole did not meet either of the outpatient appointment waiting time targets, nor did any of the individual health trusts.

Detail Data looked specifically at neurology which is the medical specialty concerned with diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the nervous system, including MS. Our analysis shows that, as of September 30th 2015, 65% of 11,268 people waiting to see a neurologist had been waiting over 18 weeks. And 80% had been waiting over nine weeks. Patients are also facing long review appointment delays with some taking place over two years past their intended review date.

The MS Society said it has obtained figures which show that 36% of people are waiting longer than a year past their consultant recommended check up date in Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.  A leading neurologist told Detail Data that waiting times are “dreadful” and said more clinics, with multidisciplinary input, are needed to meet the demand. Dr Gavin McDonnell said there are no advantages to MS patients in delaying their diagnosis and treatment as brain and spinal cord function can be irreversibly lost.

Health Minister Simon Hamilton said the reason for lengthy waiting times for neurology appointments is similar to many other specialities – the demand for outpatient consultations currently exceeds capacity – and that £40m secured in November’s monitoring round (when Stormont’s Executive reallocates unspent money) is to be spent on tackling waiting lists. The Minister added that “significant annual investment” is made every year in MS specialist drugs for patients in Northern Ireland with the current budget for the service in excess of £11m. “The Health and Social Care Board is not aware of any delays in patients diagnosed with MS commencing treatment for MS,” he said.

In response, the MS Society stressed that waiting for initial diagnosis delays treatment starting. Jenny Ruddy from the MS Society Northern Ireland said: “There needs to be a fundamental system change to ensure that people can get an appointment when they are newly referred into neurology if they have a suspected diagnosis of MS. Also if they have MS, patients need to be reviewed by their consultant when the consultant needs to see them rather than wait two to three years after their clinically intended review date".

She said there is currently unequal access to services in Northern Ireland.“There is a bit of a postcode lottery of MS services in Northern Ireland. “We are launching our manifesto today and are asking for an investment in neurology to clear that backlog initially and also the creation of an MS network to ensure that people across Northern Ireland with MS can access the services they need when they need them and where they need them.”

Nicola Moore, Secretary of The Northern Ireland Neurology Charities Alliance (niNCA) and country director of Parkinson’s UK Northern Ireland says “the current waiting times for new and review appointments in neurology across Northern Ireland are having a significant impact on everyone living with a neurological condition. The Northern Ireland Neurology Charities Alliance would urge candidates for the Assembly election to pledge their support to end the wait for people with neurological conditions and to invest in and prioritise neurology services in the next assembly mandate.”

For the full story by Detail Data's Kathryn Torney, click here.

Click here to access the waiting time data on the Detail Data Portal.

For years the Built Heritage at Risk (BHARNI) register had proven to be a valuable resource for historians, investors and conservationists – identifying areas of concern and opportunities for improvement. Among the 200 odd buildings that found new life after featuring on the database are Belfast’s St George’s Market, the Merchant Hotel and Sion Stables in Tyrone – highlighting that many of these structures should be viewed in terms of their untapped potential rather than the ‘eyesore’ tag they are often labelled with.

As such, the Detail Data project began with the simple question ‘why was the database removed?’ Initial investigations through media requests, Freedom of Information requests and interviews revealed that annual DOE funding for historic building restorations had been completely removed. From over £4.4m a year in 2014/15 to ZERO in 2015/16. We then began exploring other areas impacting upon the protection of the estimated 8,500 listed buildings in our housing stock. With funding removed we looked into whether enforcement action was being taken against owners who failed to maintain their protected properties. Interestingly, we found that enforcement action was thin on the ground even when funding streams were available. This was exemplified by the fact that more than 650 listed buildings had been stripped of their protection in the past 20 years (many due to unsuitable alterations) whilst only a few dozen had been the subject of enforcement action (just one had been vested).

Working with a number of groups involved in historic building restoration including Ulster Architectural Heritage Society (UAHS), Hearth Housing, Mourne Heritage Trust and independent consultant Rita Harkin we were able to highlight the challenges faced by those hoping to protect and enhance our limited built heritage. Following publication, the project received substantial coverage in the Irish Times, Irish News (online edition) and a number of local newspaper titles as well as being the subject matter of a live debate on BBC Talkback. That same afternoon Environment Minister Mark H Durkan faced questions, based on the report, in the Assembly.

Weeks later, the BHARNI register was reinstated on the DOE website. This was followed by at least 20 written questions to the Minister on the topic, a further session of questions in the Chamber and a debate by the Environment Committee. In January, the Detail Data team and Rita Harkin were invited to speak to members of the Environment Committee about ongoing issues such as funding, delisting and the future for built heritage in the new council and Assembly departmental structures. The issues raised in the project will also form part of the subject matter for a feature on a new television programme due to be broadcast this year.

With such continued pressure, it is hoped that there will be renewed commitment and investment in our built heritage and regeneration by the Department of Environment – and the Department of Communities in the years to come.

The data behind the Building on the Past data story can be viewed here

'Access Research Knowledge' (ARK) is a collaborative research project between Northern Ireland's two universities, established in 2000. The ARK vision is to bring social science information on Northern Ireland to the widest possible audience.

We've worked with the ARK team to develop datasets from over 15 years of comprehensive social surveys that anyone can access, share and use, now on the Detail Data Portal.

Read more about this and access the datasets here.

New data obtained by Detail Data from the Department of Health in London reveals the individual clinics the women attended, with the map illustrating the journeys they undertook to bypass strict abortion laws at home. The findings are being published as the issue of abortion continues to be hotly debated on both sides of the Irish border.

One of the key findings from an analysis of the official abortion figures is that almost half (45%) of all the abortions involving women from north and south took place in Manchester clinics. Women boarded planes or ships to travel to this city in the north west of England to terminate over 11,000 pregnancies. 30% of all of the Irish abortions recorded took place in one clinic there - Marie Stopes International Manchester.

Abortions are available in Northern Ireland only if a woman’s life is at risk or where there is a risk of a serious and adverse long term or permanent effect on her physical or mental health. The punishment is life imprisonment for anyone who unlawfully performs a termination. Abortion is also illegal in the Republic of Ireland, except where the pregnancy presents a real and substantial risk to the mother's life. Amnesty NI campaigner Grainne Teggart said: “The Northern Ireland and Irish governments don’t mind women having abortions just as long as they’re not here in Ireland. Abortions not being lawful doesn’t mean that women don’t have abortions, it means that they either resort to desperate measures or they seek those services elsewhere.”

The Abortion Act 1967 covers England, Scotland and Wales but not Northern Ireland. It states that two doctors must agree that a termination would cause less damage to a woman’s physical or mental health than continuing with the pregnancy. There are rare occasions when an abortion can take place after 24 weeks.

There are many reasons why a woman of all ages might seek an abortion. Those who had terminations outside of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the last five years include hundreds of children under the age of 16, who are therefore below the legal age of consent for sex. For some women, the decision to end their pregnancy has had long-lasting emotional consequences. One County Antrim centre which offers post-abortion counselling told us that one of their clients was aged in her 80s when she first sought help for a secret abortion she had as a teenager. “People often come to us further down the line when they have gone through anniversaries and due dates. It can affect them just like any other kind of loss,” the head of the centre in Carrickfergus said.

An abortion provider told us about women travelling for late term abortions (after 20 weeks gestation) in cases involving fatal foetal abnormalities who decide to carry their baby’s remains on flights for burial at home. Some sought official permission from airlines for this – others just hoped it wouldn’t be found in their luggage.

The Cost

The cost of abortions for women travelling to England and Wales ranges from £400 to £1,500 for the treatment alone, with travel and potential accommodation costs on top of this. Marie Stopes and BPAS offer reduced fees for women travelling from Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland because of the travel costs they face.

The Data

Using Freedom of Information legislation, Detail Data requested and received a breakdown by clinic of five years of abortions involving women from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This is the first time the data relating to each individual clinic in England and Wales has been released into the public domain.

To view this data on the Detail Data Portal, click here.

The story, by Kathryn Torney: Abortion Exported: the women travelling for terminations was published by Detail Data on 14 December 2015. 

Detail Data have also included an article written by a young Belfast woman on her experience of travelling outside of Northern Ireland after she learnt at her 20 year scan that the baby girl she was carrying had anencephaly.  To view this article vist here.

This data portal has been developed as the platform to deliver open datasets to the public under the Open Data Strategy. It is the one place where a wide range of data from public sector organisations can be accessed. The data is made available under the Open Government Licence, which means that it is free to anyone to copy, adapt, commercially exploit and publish.

The portal has nine topics across which datasets are spread (including Health, Education, Finance, Environment and agriculture, Property and land, and more). Public sector organisations, including councils, will publish their data on this portal. At the moment, there are datasets from a number of bodies such as the Driver and Vehicle Agency, NI Water, NISRA, DCAL and Land & Property Services.

At the outset, departments and agencies have prioritised which data to publish. But the portal also has a data suggest function where users can ask for data that they think should be published on the portal. A number of requests have been made by the Detail Data team. Suggestions are publicly visible, as are the responses from the data holders, providing an easy way for users to see how the Strategy is progressing.

At this stage, OpenDataNI has datasets such as the monthly GP Prescribing Data, the NI Transport Network, and education activity. You can even find out the pass rates at the various driving test centres. There’s also a Census microdata sample dataset for students wanting to get experience in using large survey datasets.

Development

Open data has proven beneficial economic and social impacts. It can also help to improve citizen engagement with government and public services.

At the moment, open data is largely an untapped resource in Northern Ireland. There are a number of public datasets that could be brought to OpenDataNI. We also know that there are a number of data sources that the public would like to access, to make better decisions, develop innovative products and services, undertake research and gain better insight into how their public services perform.

So we highly recommend registering a user account on OpenDataNI and thinking about what data you’d like to see on there.

Complimentary services

Earlier this year Detail Data launched its own open data portal which currently hosts 58 datasets from 20 different sources including academic, statutory and voluntary and community organisations. It also includes datasets used in data-driven news stories published by the project.

The Detail Data Portal is specifically relevant to the voluntary and community sector.  To ensure no duplication of sources between the two portals the Detail Data Portal links to data held on the OpenDataNI portal.  Detail Data is also offering a Masterclass on how to use our portal. The Masterclass will also explore the new OpenDataNI portal so that participants are aware of all sources of open data in Northern Ireland. If you are interested in attending this training book for free here.

Detail Data today publishes for the first time three and a half years of financial offers made to Northern Ireland firms, revealing more information than ever on the work of Invest NI.

A THIRD of all Invest NI funding to support Northern Ireland businesses in 2011-2014 went to Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and the government agency responsible for boosting the film industry. NI Screen, together with the two universities which also receive millions of pounds annually from the Department for Employment & Learning - were offered a total of £107million from Invest NI. Over the same period the figures show that 2,792 other local firms shared £216million Invest NI funding.

Research into the figures provided by Invest NI has also raised questions over the level of job creation, it has illustrated a stark east/west split in Invest NI funding across Northern Ireland, and suggested that Invest NI may fall short of commitments to support deprived communities. Economist John Simpson said: “Invest NI is an important influence on what's happening in the local community. We have had a modest amount of information on the support it has offered up to now. Invest NI has been tested by the [Stormont] Public Accounts Committee and the Audit Office, but now we have the capacity to look at a very large number of forms of assistance, which will better inform policymakers on how Invest NI has done.”

Invest NI defended its record and said: “We principally support those businesses that can make the greatest contribution to growing our economy.” Both universities said that the Invest NI support funded vital research. At Ulster University this included fire testing which helped develop new concrete fire and blast proof panels through its spin-out company Vifkon. And at Queen’s University £7million of the Invest NI funding was spent working with Almac on identifying ways to treat cancer. NI Screen said it did not want to comment on its funding from Invest NI, however, it has used the financial support to attract productions like HBO’s Game of Thrones and Universal Pictures’ Dracula Untold to Northern Ireland.

Detail Data examined 6,653 projects that were financially supported by Invest NI between April 2011 and September 2014. 

Key findings

• Three government-funded organisations received one-third of the Invest NI spend on local companies. They were NI Screen (£64million) Ulster University (£24million) and Queen’s University (£19million).
• Businesses in the east of Northern Ireland received 81% of funding, compared to 19% in the west.
• A total of 71% of projects that received funding had no specific job creation targets. However, Invest NI said that job creation was only one condition potentially applied to funding, with others including research and development, skills development, or innovation which could also ultimately create jobs.
• Invest NI’s spend per head of population across Northern Ireland ranged from £33.24 in the former Ards Borough Council area to £452.59 in the former Belfast City Council area.
• 823 local start up projects were funded. This included initiatives to tackle deprivation with 208 in Neighbourhood Renewal Areas (NRA). Invest NI’s corporate plan target (2011-2015) was to fund 1,500 business start ups by residents of NRAs during the current Assembly term.
• £257million of Invest NI financial support was spent in urban areas compared to £66million in rural areas.

To view the full article by the Detail's Lindsay Fergus, click here.

There are no allegations of wrongdoing against Invest NI, which falls under the remit of the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Investment (DETI), or against any business that received support or any other party.

The Data The findings of this article emerged from Invest NI data secured by Detail Data through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. Details of 6,653 offers accepted by indigenous firms between April 2011 - September 2014. Invest NI said information on a further £28million of offers could not be disclosed citing FOI exemptions including data protection and commercial sensitivity. To view the data that support this story click here

The impending retirement and replacement of First Minister and east Belfast MLA Peter Robinson means that 22 of the 108 MLAs (20.4%) at Stormont will have been appointed by their parties and not the electorate.

Substitute MLAs have been appointed in 12 of the 18 Assembly constituencies, with four of the current six south Belfast Assembly members unelected.

The Detail Data project, which gathered the figures, notes that legislation introduced in 2010 allows parties to replace outgoing members with a replacement politician of their choice – in a process that the public has no official means of objecting to.

The substitution mechanism aims to eliminate arguments caused by the old co-option system and to eradicate by-election costs estimated at up to £215,000 per poll.

There are multiple reasons for the large turnover of MLAs, with the eradication of double jobbing among political representatives one of the main drivers.

In the current Assembly term 14 members have left Stormont in favour of seats in Westminster, Brussels or local councils. Ill health has also been cited as the rationale for a number of other substitutions.

According to election analyst Nicholas Whyte the current scenario represents the “least worst option” for the electorate, even though some of the changes have caused public controversy. “By-elections are expensive, not supported by the electorate in terms of turnout, and distort the electoral representation in that smaller parties are less likely to win them. Nomination by party leaders is in some ways the least worst option - at least in that case the electoral balance of the previous election is preserved, in numbers if not in person.”

But in addition to MLA replacements there have been major shifts in who sits at the Executive table, with repeated ministerial changes raising questions over continuity of leadership in departments.

Only five of the 15 ministerial and junior ministerial seats have been occupied by the same representative for the complete duration of the Assembly term that began in May 2011. The key departments of health and finance have seen three ministers each in the current Assembly term, while enterprise, environment, social development, regional development and the two junior ministries have also seen changes. Both Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness have temporarily stepped down from their positions in the current term – Mr Robinson during the DUP’s in-out strategy and Mr McGuinness during his Irish presidential candidacy. As such, only the departments of agriculture, culture, education, employment & learning and justice have had the same minister at the helm for the duration of the current term.

But the changes can have an impact on the public according to some groups lobbying the Assembly. Anita Flanagan of Fermanagh Community Transport (FCT) said her organisation raised the issue of rural transport with the former Department of Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy. “We had met with Danny Kennedy a number of times and had built up a relationship with him,” she said. He had been to our office, he met with our users and he had built up a knowledge of what we do. Community Transport is only a small part of the Regional Development minister’s budget – when you look at things like Translink. But we got it brought up his agenda through engagement and asking questions. We met him twice in July and at the end of the second meeting felt that we were getting somewhere. There is now a new minister and that minister needs to learn her post which takes time. So every time you have a new minister you have to start from scratch which is difficult – especially when there are cuts to be made. There will probably be a new minister again after the election and the change in departments.”