Why does it feel like Northern Ireland’s public finances are in a never ending crisis? It seems as though we are caught in a cycle of both growing demand for public services and very limited growth in the funds necessary to pay for them. Just when it seems like we’ve dug ourselves out of one hole, we suddenly seem to find ourselves further down in another one. In this Long Read Paul Mac Flynn and Lisa Wilson argue that for too long the debate about fiscal sustainability has too narrowly focused on short term budget management.