STORMONT STALEMATE: Businesses are 'falling behind' the south and the rest of UK
Northern Ireland has officially been without a government for over two years now. Stormont collapsed in January 2016, after Martin McGuinness' resignation.
Sinn Fein refused to nominate a new Deputy first minster following the RHI scandal, ending more than ten years of powersharing.
To mark the second anniversary, Downtown & Cool FM will be running a special series throughout the week to examine the human impact here.
Today we look into business - and find out how we continue to fall well behind the rest of the UK when it comes to staff security and rates.
The state of our economy depends heavily on our businesses here - and how well they are doing.
It's a vital sector - which provides us all with goods, services and most importantly - jobs.
But in the two year impasse - they have been under extreme pressure - with legislation around things like rates being left on the back burner.
Aodhán Connolly, the director of Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, told our reporter Sasha Wylie exactly how the sector is being hit by the impasse.
He said: "We can get mission critical decision made in the same way as the rest of the UK. For example in Scotland they are now putting the Barclay review in place to make a lower poundage to make bus rates a better scheme same in wale and the rest of England – here we’ve had no assembly, no executive and no movement. And what it means is that we will not only have some of the highest bus taxations but it also makes us less competitive across Europe and globally.
“Before the collapse, we had an innovative lab on the future of bus rate, we were talking about things like health and the skills agenda – but that’s all come to a stand-still or at least a snails pace."
"The most frustrating things for us is that the rest of UK they are looking at how to protect shop workers – that makes it a higher grade offensive for those who verbally abuse or assault a shop worker. Yet again we have no legislatures in place so we can’t bring in these new ideas to help protect everyone here and move forward.”
Mr Connolly told us how hard the past two years have been without a government with events like Brexit and the fire at Bank Buildings having a huge impact on the sector.
He says it's vital to get devolved government back - and not to head towards direct rule.
He continued: "Devolved government is not perfect – but it’s a lot better than any alternative we face and our members believe a functioning devolved government were politicians work together for the better of the economy and also social levels – that’s the best form of government for us and we want it back."