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Northern Ireland’s powersharing Executive is offering “more chaff than change”, SDLP leader Claire Hanna has told her party’s annual conference in Belfast.

Ms Hanna accused the Executive parties of kicking big decisions “into the long grass” as she attacked their record of delivery.

The SDLP is the official opposition party at Stormont.

Ms Hanna was delivering her third conference speech as leader.

She told conference that “five years ago, people were promised seismic change from the big parties”.

She said: “They were told that this time would be different. A history-making First Minister. A yellow wave, demanding better. Well, that early promise has evaporated.

“Making history doesn’t fix public services. Demanding better isn’t the same as delivering.”

The MP said that the absence of a Stormont budget was treated “like some boring accountancy quirk”.

She said: “More chaff than change, more heat than light. Big decisions kicked back into the long grass.

“And when delivery becomes difficult, what happens? Well, we know the script by now. Dissatisfaction gives way to distraction, raking over the past instead of a focus on the future.”

Ms Hanna said the recent row over an application for an Orange Order march at Drumcree in Portadown is the “latest avatar for a politics that makes capital from reopening painful wounds”.

The SDLP leader said more people are becoming involved in conversations about Northern Ireland’s constitutional future.

She said: “More people are asking what a New Ireland could look like and more people who might never have considered it are prepared to listen.

“The direction of travel is clear, a new Ireland isn’t just on the table. It’s on the move.”

She added: “We aren’t plucking dates for a border poll out of the air. We’re doing the work. We’re building something better, something new.”

The party’s Stormont leader Matthew O’Toole told the conference in Belfast the visit of US President Donald Trump to Ireland is a “reminder of how politics all over the world has changed in the past 10 years”.

Turning to the lack of a Stormont budget, Mr O’Toole said Executive parties “want to take power but refuse to accept responsibility”.

He added: “That responsibility has to start with a budget.

“We are nearly halfway through the financial year and there is no Budget

“No budget means no plan. No plan to get cancer waiting times down, no plan to build the homes we need by investing in our crumbling water infrastructure.

“Is it any wonder that good people feel like giving up on politics here?”

Mr O’Toole said Northern had been left without a budget before, but never for six months while there is a functioning Executive.

He said: “Never before have ministers continued to take their salaries and all the privileges of office while simply refusing to take responsibility for the most basic tasks of Government.”