Stormont collapse would risk waiting list reforms, NI Health Minister warns

Collapsing Stormont before the end of the Assembly term would endanger vital reforms aimed at reducing Northern Ireland's spiralling waiting lists, Northern Ireland's Health Minister has warned.

Robin Swann said it was not realistic to expect the health service to function properly in the absence of a powersharing administration.

Mr Swann said any party that brought down the institutions during the Covid pandemic, and when so much work was needed to tackle what are the UK's longest waiting lists, would do a "disservice" to patients and healthcare staff in Northern Ireland.

The minister’s comments come amid repeated threats from the DUP to withdraw its ministers from the Executive in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol.

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DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has said while that option remains on table, he has paused the threat pending the outcome of the latest round of negotiations between the UK and EU to resolve issues with the contentious post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Last summer, Sinn Féin also threatened the future of the administration in Belfast when the party warned it would not continue to be part of an executive without progress on stalled Irish language legislation.

Thanks to Stormont’s mandatory powersharing structures, a functioning executive can only be constituted if the largest unionist and largest nationalist parties are part of it.

Mr Swann said: “For the sake of all those people who are on a waiting list, for the sake of all those people who work in our health service, this place needs political leadership.”

Anticipated

While the current mandate is due to end in March, ahead of an anticipated election in May, Mr Swann said the next two months were vital if the Assembly was to have the time to pass its first multi-year budget in a decade.

The draft budget is proposing a 10 per cent increase in health spending, with

€25 billion (£21 billion) earmarked for services over the next three years.

“Our biggest challenge within health has been the systemic underfunding for the past 10 years,” said Mr Swann.

“But what was compounded with that was a one year budget rotation that didn’t allow us to invest in the health service or make those transformational changes that we needed to do or actually put people into posts for the long term, because we didn’t know the budget was going to be there (in future years).

“So at this moment in time we have a potential draft three-year budget out for consultation. The timeline on that consultation finishing and by the time it goes through the Assembly that runs us into the end of this mandate.

‘Decisions’

“So if there’s no institution there, there’s no Finance Minister to make those decisions, there’s no Health Minister then to utilise what the health allocation is strategically – that’s where we go back to that one year rolling budget that doesn’t allow health to make the strategic changes that need to be done.”

Mr Swann said the health service “doesn’t work” without an executive in place.

“We need the Executive there making those collective decisions, we need the Assembly there to make those decisions as well and to get legislation through,” he said.

“To think that collapsing the institutions will leave health able to do what it’s doing, I don’t think is realistic.

“It will put us back into the position that we were in before January 2020 (when Stormont was last collapsed) where although the health service was existing and it was doing things, it wasn’t able to do the structural strategic changes or make those decisions that were actually needed. – PA