Debate contribution: Independent Reconfiguration Committee
Debate contribution by Mr Robbie Butler on .
- MLA
- Mr Robbie Butler
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 7 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Question for Urgent Oral Answer
- Heading
- Independent Reconfiguration Committee
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5670127
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your welcome. I am not the first Health Minister to hail from Lagan Valley. I pay my respects to my predecessor, Mike Nesbitt, who performed a fantastic function as Health Minister and is responsible for bringing me to the House. Mr Speaker, I welcome this first opportunity to stand here as Minister, and I look forward to working closely with you and Assembly colleagues in the short time that is left in the mandate. In that collective spirit of generosity, I hope that you will grant me a little longer to respond to this really important issue. I want to be clear from the outset what the independent reconfiguration committee (IRC) is and what it is not. Despite what may have been stated by some as fact last week, I need to be clear that it is not another review of Northern Ireland's health service — we have had enough reviews — nor is it another layer of bureaucracy through which every service change must pass. However, as per my written ministerial statement last Thursday afternoon, the committee, similar to the equivalent body that has already existed for some time in England, will be a small, independent and responsive source of expert advice that I can call on but only as and when a major or controversial proposal for permanent service change requires additional scrutiny. I appreciate that that point of detail may have been lost on some — not necessarily in the House, by the way — last week, but I encourage everyone to read my Department's new, detailed analysis report in response to the hospital network consultation. I intend that the committee be established shortly and, indeed, as soon as possible. It had also been the direction of travel of my predecessor, and so my Department has already made much progress. Work was already under way over previous months on its membership, its terms of reference and its operating arrangements. I will update the House as those arrangements are finalised. Importantly, the IRC, as I am referring to it, will not have an open-ended remit. Where I refer a proposal to it, I expect its work to be focused and completed within a defined time frame appropriate to the issue under consideration. That is important. There has been considerable discussion about the proposal over recent days, and I welcome that scrutiny, even if I do not engage with it on Twitter. However, I make no apology for wanting to interrogate the evidence before making major decisions that can have profound and permanent consequences for patients, staff and, importantly, our communities. Clinical evidence will always be fundamental to those decisions. I have already spent considerable time meeting and listening directly to clinicians, and I will continue to do so. As I have said already, clinicians can also hold very different views about complex proposals, and trusts can make recommendations that deserve further examination. The communities that we are charged to serve are entitled to confidence that alternatives have been properly considered before permanent decisions are taken. That is where independent scrutiny can and will add value. The committee will be able to examine the evidence underpinning a referred proposal, test the assumptions being made, consider reasonable alternatives and look at issues including patient safety, clinical effectiveness, sustainability and the wider consequences for our health service. It will advise me; it will not make the decision for me. I support the reform of our health service, but, equally, reform needs and is entitled to scrutiny. My responsibility is to make the right decisions on the basis of the best possible available evidence, and I believe that additional independent scrutiny in the most significant and contentious cases will help me do exactly that. My ambition is to have the right people in the right place at the right time.
643 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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