Debate contribution: Muckamore Abbey Hospital Inquiry Final Report
Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on .
- MLA
- Mr Mike Nesbitt
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 22 June 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Ministerial Statement
- Heading
- Muckamore Abbey Hospital Inquiry Final Report
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5637772
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for pointing out that there are families in the Gallery: I was unaware of that. I have said that I want to meet them, hopefully this week. If they have time after the session, I would like to come up, say hello and start that conversation. Yes, there are people working in HSC who lived through the scandal. When it comes to the Belfast Trust, I will repeat that I have a meeting scheduled with the chair and the chief exec later today. That will be the start of trying to come to a determination about whether the trust that I have put in them remains as solid as I have said it is and whether that is a valid position to take.
Clearly, the primary harm that that evil has done has been on the patients at Muckamore, their families and their friends. That, rightly, is our primary focus today. However, the Member makes a valid point about the ripples of uncertainty and, potentially, fear, particularly for vulnerable people and their families in the community. Those ripples are out there, and one of the things that that does is undermine trust. Some 75,000 or 76,000 people, I believe, deliver health and social care in this country. The vast majority are entirely trustworthy and are to be commended for what they do. I reassure them that I am with them and do not consider them to be in the same category as the number who perpetrated the evil of Muckamore or, indeed, those who should have identified that evil early and stopped it early.
268 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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