Debate contribution: Muckamore Abbey Hospital Inquiry Final Report

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 22 June 2026.

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 5637794

Text

It was shameful, so we have to do everything humanly possible to make sure that it never happens again. There are 106 recommendations. I will not go through them all, but I will take the first and the last. Recommendation 106 is about a small working group to discuss redress. That includes patients, families and service users: I will absolutely do that. Recommendation 1 is:
"The implementation of the following recommendations should be monitored by the DoH ... To ensure progress is made, an implementation consultation group, which should include service users and the relatives of service users, should be created and be involved in the monitoring and reporting process".
Yes, that will happen. I will do everything that I can to make sure that the right voices are heard in the right places at the right time.
First of all, we will need time to assess not just the recommendations in their own right but how they will interact with the adult safeguarding Bill. I cannot give you definitive answers to that now. We will need more time than we have had since the publication of the report on 18 June.
The Member also mentioned funding. In my mind, I have divided the 106 recommendations into three categories, one of which is consideration for the funding, but he is talking about funding for the implementation of the Adult Protection Bill. It may be that the publication of the report and the focus on the evil that was perpetrated at Muckamore will ease the purse strings when it comes to how we allocate budget to the Adult Protection Bill as we implement it as an Act.
On the latter point, we are talking about the support and intervention framework, which is commonly known as "special measures". I put the Belfast Trust into level 5, which is the highest level. I have brought the trust out of that, because I felt that we were getting somewhere with the leadership. As I have said on a couple of occasions, I am meeting the leadership — the chief executive and the chair — today. I do not rule anything out around further interventions, because it is incredibly serious. I was quite surprised to read in the report that, after the warning letters went out, there was a response from the trust that ran to well over 400 pages. On reflection, it is a very detailed and complex issue, and we, as a Department, have responded to some queries from the inquiry with a great deal of volume. My focus is not really on the volume but on the tone and attitude and the fact that Mr Kark said that it was adversarial. A public inquiry is not an adversarial platform. I need to better understand why he came to that conclusion and why the trust felt that need. In my view of life, if you get it wrong, put your hand up and fix it; do not try to justify it. We all know that the cover-up is always worse than what happened in the first place.

514 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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