Health Minister Robin Swann ‘pleading’ for Stormont budget solution amid hospitals crisis

Health Minister Robin Swann has said the failure to agree a three-year budget for Northern Ireland had “cruelly robbed” patients of the best chance in a decade to resolve the health service crisis.

Mr Swann also warned: “Our waiting lists are appalling, but in the absence of funding and a functioning executive, they will likely get worse instead of better.

“That is the abhorrent reality of the situation we are currently facing.”

The collapse of the powersharing Executive means Stormont cannot now strike a proposed three-year budget for the period 2022-25, a spending plan that envisaged a 10% cash uplift for the Department of Health.

Speaking on Thursday, the health minister issued a direct plea to his ministerial colleagues to find a way forward.

“Today I am pleading. I am pleading with all parties and my fellow ministers to work together and sort out the budget,” Mr Swann said.

“Ideally by re-establishing the Executive, or failing that by finding some other way forward.”

Hospital emergency departments and the ambulance service have been coming under intense pressure – a situation exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, lengthy waiting lists have already been building for years and Northern Ireland’s are among the worst in the UK, with one in four people in the region said to be on a waiting list for health services.

“Anyone who suggests that there are quick and easy answers is doing a disservice to patients, they are doing a disservice to the staff and they are doing a disservice to the public,” the health minister said.

“There is no solution which does not involve significant and long-term investment.

“The fact that we have limped from one single-year budget to the next for the last seven to eight years was just another reason our health service has been unable to keep up with demand.

“The real damage caused by the loss of additional funding that the draft budget would have provided cannot be stressed enough.

“I still hope that some budget certainty can be raised from those ashes, but in the likely event it isn’t, patients and staff have been cruelly robbed of the best chance they have had in the last decade.

“You can’t rebuild capacity without the certainty of funding and without training and recruiting the necessary numbers of staff.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Health reported two more people who had previously tested positive for Covid-19 have died in Northern Ireland.

Another 2,486 confirmed cases of the virus have also been notified in the last 24-hour reporting period up to 10am on Thursday.

On Thursday morning, there were 483 Covid-19 patients in hospital, five of whom were in intensive care.

Hospitals are at 107% capacity, with all but two of the 12 sites beyond their limit.