The Northern Ireland Executive is sleepwalking its way through government, the Alliance party's annual conference heard today.
Assembly member Naomi Long said last month's Programme for Government was directionless and risked doing more harm than good. She lambasted ministers for producing a flimsy 17-page document which she claimed failed to adequately tackle sectarianism or other pressing issues.
"The sad truth about the Draft Programme for Government is that it has neither enough vision to qualify as a daydream, nor enough action to qualify as a nightmare," she said.
"It is more akin to sleepwalking - a directionless stroll in the dark, with no clear purpose and with the risk of doing more harm than good."
The East Belfast MLA was speaking during a debate on the issue at the Antrim conference.
She said that she thought pages had been missing from the programme when she first saw it.
"So, that's 17 pages by 12 ministers, two junior ministers and a cabal of special advisers, with the back-up of their departments," she added. "That averages just over a page per minister in 11 months (Since the St Andrew's Agreement).
"And this from an Executive which is lecturing the public sector about efficiency.
"Frankly the Programme for Government looks like the kind of thing which a reasonable student could knock out in a long evening and it may have been more imaginative and coherent if they had."
She criticised ministers for borrowing from direct rule priorities.
"I believe that this Programme is not ambitious enough," she said.
"It assumes that because division and segregation are facts of life today, they must be perpetuated into the future. I accept no such defeatist attitude."
PA