Not long to go now before Stormont is on its holidays again. I refer to the 108 folks on the hill.

Exhausted by their endeavours to date they look forward to another month of rest and recuperation over Christmas.

Will they return in January 2009, refreshed and revived, ready to stare each other in the face for another six months or more, as so many of them appear to have done for so much of 2008? Have they no shame, a business friend of mine lamented to me last week as he reflected on the desperate downturn in Northern Ireland’s fortunes.

He is far from alone in his despair but like so many, seems powerless to do anything about it. Around 63% of us voted for Assembly members and the salaries and expenses they enjoy have been the subject of much eyebrow-raising.

Still, the cost of Stormont remains a small price to pay for lasting peace. Talking and debating is infinitely better than killing and maiming. Yet what about the new beginning promised as long ago as last June?

This is you, Peter Robinson speaking as First Minister on June 5: “A year on, the settling-in period is over. The time for the Executive and Assembly to deliver has come ... We must address unresolved issues in a way that commands confidence in the community ... Applying a veto is not an indication of strength. It is simply an indication of a failure to agree.”

And this is you, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness on the same occasion: “We need to start talking to each other and not at each other. And we as political leaders must take the lead ... ” On reflection, what grand and hollow rhetoric? What promises not delivered over five months as this community continues to endure your failure to agree?

You may argue in response that you have been in talks and that there is increasing speculation that some form of deal can be achieved. But as I write, major issue after major issue is unresolved. Matters of schooling, planning, policing, or whatever remain in dispute and dissent.

To date you have failed to deliver. As a result, the Executive and Assembly of Northern Ireland are like an army of Neros playing in the biggest and most expensive fiddle orchestra in Western Europe.

Have you no shame, my friend asks? He poses the question in Northern Ireland’s hour of need, as we survey the wreckage of the recession all around us. Community leaders exhort you. Business leaders exhort you. The plain people of Ulster, losing their jobs, homes and savings, exhort you. And yet nothing seems to happen. Instead, we are left to wonder what kind of multi-headed monster inhabits the Stormont estate, roaming around aimlessly one way, then the other, with no apparent sense of forward direction or momentum?

So what can be done? In any other society, the answer would be blindingly obvious.

Identify immediately the one enormous burning issue of this moment — the Northern Ireland economy — and let every politician and party combine collectively to do all in their power to help people through it.

If necessary, ring-fence disputed irreconcilable issues for a day, a week, or for however long it takes, until everything possible has been done to limit the economic damage that is taking place.

This is not a unionist or a nationalist or a republican problem. This is about the threat to the livelihoods of every one of us, Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter; up the Shankill Road and down the Falls; town and country, business leader and trade union activist alike.

This recession knows no barriers, is totally indiscriminate, can strike anytime and anywhere. When we look elsewhere, governments and parliaments have one priority — to find ways of protecting their economies from collapse.

Politics is about leadership and the buck must stop with you, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness. You and your parties chose to share power and you must carry the can for the extent to which that power is effective.

The fact that your Executive has not met for so long is a reflection on both of your failures to make the economic future of us all, the most important, the most pressing issue of the day.

When the history of the Stormont Assembly and Executive is written, what will be said about the autumn of 2008? That you, our leaders, failed us in our hour of need? That you promised much and delivered little?

You still have time to act. Time to show you can still see the big picture. Five months and 12 days have passed since you spoke those glowing words of promise as First and Deputy First Minister. In the time since, you have shown insufficient sense of urgency. Your tardiness has been found out by the recession.

I do hope you strike a deal. Think about the question. Have you no shame? Asked by someone who I am sure has no axe to grind on your respective political outlooks.

As time runs out, more and more people are surely asking that same question. You and Stormont cannot stand idly by for much longer.

Yours Ed