Debate contribution: Health
Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on .
- MLA
- Mr Mike Nesbitt
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 15 June 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Question for Urgent Oral Answer
- Heading
- Health
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5614251
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I do not have those statistics to hand. It is hard to measure in a statistical way the impact on morale, on people feeling safe or on the number of our international colleagues who now feel that the situation has become so dire that they are no longer prepared to stay with us. I tell them that they are welcome, that they are treasured and that we want them to stay. I would not, however, encourage a single person to stay if they felt that they were putting themselves at risk physically or at risk of psychological torture. I will be clear that that is what has been happening. It is not just about the hospitals. I was in Ballyclare last week, where I visited an advice centre for international colleagues working in healthcare. It had been attacked, and the windows were cracked. Down the street, a community domiciliary care team comprised largely of international colleagues were frightened to go about their business. They work across Northern Ireland and are frightened to go to help people. Mr Ogilvie was tended to by healthcare workers. I do not know who was on that team, but I would be surprised if there were not international colleagues who helped that man. The people who are out rioting, who are racists, do not care. That is appalling. Let us remember that healthcare workers are attacked daily in our emergency departments and in our hospitals by indigenous people from this part of planet earth. The last thing that those workers need is a layer of racism on top.
On the Member's second question, all the trusts have protocols in place to provide physical and psychological support to anybody who works in our Health and Social Care (HSC) system who is under attack or under threat. I have not had a report on the number of staff who have left. If people are leaving, I expect to be told, but I have not had any reports of anybody having left. Once again, however, if people are leaving, no one in the House could blame them for doing so. It is not just in our hospitals. It happens to people working in domiciliary care — home care — delivery. Remember that, when you knock on somebody's front door, you do not know what to expect. You know that you are tending to a service user or a patient, but you do not know who else is in the house. You do not know who is lurking round the back. Those workers put themselves potentially in harm's way, yet we reward them with racist attacks. Seriously?
I assure the Member that their concerns are being heard. I hope that I demonstrate that by visiting not just hospitals but places such as the one in Ballyclare that I mentioned. I will continue to do that. For the past two years, I have been out every week, at least once a week, visiting Health and Social Care settings. I would like to think that the Health and Social Care workforce understand that I am interested and am listening. When it comes to what is happening outside of Health and Social Care settings, the police clearly have a role. When the children of international colleagues are afraid to go to school, that stretches beyond what the Department of Health can do, apart from speaking in their support and liaising with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, in particular, as well as social services where appropriate. We have to take the matter as seriously as anything that has happened during the mandate. I have been attacked many times on social media because yesterday, on television, I said that what had happened was a stain on this country locally, nationally and internationally. I stand by that statement, despite what people say. People ask, "Why are we bringing people in? Why are we not training up more local people?". We are training up more local people than ever, but we cannot get enough of them to ensure that the system does not collapse without our international colleagues.
Yes, I absolutely give that assurance. The last point that the Member made about the entire workforce in Health and Social Care is important to me. On Wednesday night, I was in Lisburn, in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service's command and control centre. The previous night, it had received more than 300 phone calls. That is the highest number that anybody in that room could remember, and some of them have been in the Fire and Rescue Service for over 20 years. They said that it was much worse than the Eleventh night bonfires. There were 31 fire trucks in Belfast last Tuesday night, 21 of which did not belong in Belfast. They had come from fire stations here, there and everywhere. That was a third of the entire fleet. Are you telling me that that level of resource can be diverted without a potential impact on business as normal elsewhere — on road traffic collisions, house fires and all the rest that the Fire and Rescue Service cannot predict? Are you telling me that those firefighters could look at me and say, with 100% certainty, "This does not put other areas at risk"? No, they could not. Then they saw on social media that long list of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs). I saw in the eyes of the senior leadership of the Fire and Rescue Service not fear but recognition that, if the attacks on those homes were widespread, they would not be able to handle them. They would not have had the numbers of trucks or personnel to handle that level of attack and lives would have been at risk. Firefighters put themselves in harm's way daily to save lives. I urge the Health Committee to visit firefighters again, just to reassure them.
981 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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