In the week when Burt Bacharach died at the age of 94, we were reminded of the incredible list of the many famous songs he wrote; appropriately enough on Valentine’s week, one of them was 'Anyone who had a heart'.

Our politicians don’t, it would seem, specifically this week the DUP who declined the opportunity to do the right thing on Tuesday at the Assembly at Stormont which they’ve collapsed at the moment in their campaign to have the Northern Ireland Protocol removed.

The party could have agreed to elect a Speaker for one day to enable the passing the Organ and Consent Bill, labelled Daithi’s Law after the little boy with a heart defect whose family have campaigned for a system which would mean all adults are considered potential organ donors unless they specifically state otherwise.

Northern Ireland is the only place in the UK where this system is not in place, but if it did have this provision then Daithi MacGabhann and many others would have a much greater chance of survival.

The Bill had been well advanced through the Assembly before Stormont collapsed, and it could have been passed into law on Tuesday. But the DUP refused to budge.

Presumably part of the thinking for them is that if they’d agreed to this then what would be next worthy cause pressurising them to lift the boycott of the Assembly and constantly going back would render their protest less effective.

Nobody doubts the strong feeling about the Protocol within a section of the community, but is there not a better way to resolve it without holding us all to ransom?

The outworking of this is that the DUP is accused of putting the Protocol above health; indeed, it could be argued above the lives of people such as Daithi.

The party is in the firing line and the performance of former First Minister, Paul Givan on The View last Thursday night on BBC television was excruciating.

His assertion that “health is a top priority” was immediately challenged by presenter Mark Carruthers, “it’s not your top priority, the Protocol is your top priority".

Givan: You’re making out it’s Protocol or health.

Carruthers: But it is Protocol or health.

Givan: They’re connected.

Carruthers: You’ve made a political decision, a calculation and that’s why other parties aren’t at Stormont.

In a classic diversionary tactic, the DUP has since turned its ire on Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris, accusing him of disgracefully using Daithi to blackmail them.

Sorry, that doesn’t wash, as much as we know Heaton-Harris is rather useless and maybe even is using the situation in some abhorrent way, this still stinks of DUP hypocrisy.

After complaining bitterly that Westminster stepped in to pass laws on abortion and marriage equality, the DUP are insisting that on the Daithi issue, Westminster should, er, step in and pass the law.

Well, the Westminster parliament should get on with it and get it done but that shouldn’t remove the spotlight from the failures of our system at Stormont.

Decency and humanity should make us remember that in the middle of all this is a little boy with serious health problems. Politicians have a responsibility to make our lives better, so if they can’t help this particular family one wonders what the point of politics is.

So, the whole issue raises much wider questions about the way this place is governed by an Assembly that hasn’t sat for four of the last six years.

If only there was a way to change things, eh? Well, technically there is. In a normal democracy, the people could vote for new politicians to come in. Not here. And that’s partly our fault as a people because it seems that whatever the issues are, those who do vote are returning the same old, same old every time.

And anyway, not only did the last election not produce an Assembly that actually sits (which the majority of people voted for) but the Westminster Government is so lost to know what to do that they have put another election off until 2024.

What we get, therefore, is a flawed political system and if we were hoping that those at the top level of the unaccountable civil service would bail us out, ask the people of Fermanagh if they feel the mandarins are listening to their pleas for a fair and safe health service.

The so-called “temporary” suspension of Emergency General Surgery at the South-West Acute Hospital has pulled back the curtain on a dysfunctional system.

Those campaigners fighting for SWAH have articulated the case and issues well, but they must be incredibly frustrated at the condescending tone and the deaf ear of the Trust.

As our health service in Northern Ireland lurches from one crisis to another, nobody would deny that it needs urgent reform. So brave and visionary decisions are needed under a transformation process. We have to accept it may mean changes at SWAH, as long as people’s lives are not put at risk and services are there in times of need.

But as Professor Deirdre Heenan said last week, what’s happening at SWAH isn’t transformation, it’s collapse.

While much attention is paid to health, the flawed way we’re governed frustrates many people at community level in all areas of our lives.

In an interview in the Belfast Telegraph last week Paul Gosling revealed he had left a job inside the Stormont system last year, horrified by what he saw.

“I was completely appalled,” he said. “The difficulty in getting things done was astonishing.” He said there was a cadre of civil servants who don’t expect to be told what to do.

He quotes an example of trying to get some gullies cleaned in a part of Derry because they were causing flooding. Two years later, they were still blocked.

It’s symptomatic of the blockage of our whole system; if we can’t get drains cleared what hope is there of getting our health, education and other services sorted?

If we didn’t know it already, the case of Daithi this week and the ongoing concerns over SWAH highlight the dangers to democracy when people are not accountable to the people they are supposed to serve. Somewhere along the line, the honourable principle of public service has been lost.

At the end of the day, it won’t be leaders who resolve it, certainly not the present lot; it will be the ordinary people who should keep raising their voices and remember that they have the power within them to effect change if that is what the really want.

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