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
- Business
- Question for Urgent Oral Answer
- Heading
- Independent Reconfiguration Committee
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5670143
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for North Belfast for asking a very reasonable question. A lot of things in recent weeks have misrepresented the health transformation journey. Bengoa has not been paused. If, at some stage, anybody cares to ask me a question on that, I will take the House through the litany of changes that was Bengoa. However, the Bengoa report was a set of principles and pillars, not a plan. Bengoa charged us with doing things differently. The report did not tell us to set aside community confidence, and that is what has been missing all along in our journey to transform and reset our health system, so that is what I have set about doing. I go back to the point made by the Member for North Belfast. The consultation 'Hospitals — Creating a Network for Better Outcomes' collected nearly 30,000 responses: that is unprecedented. When you look into the responses to that consultation, you see that they point very directly to one thing, which is that we have very nearly challenged the important relationship that has to exist between the patients who receive the care and those charged with changing that care. What I am about is resetting that, and I believe that we can do that within this mandate. I believe that we can get the IRC panel, with political and public confidence, to take cognisance of the business cases that come before us. I have to be clear, however, that this is not a rushed decision. I have not seen a proposal. Some of you in the Chamber seem to be better sighted of a report that I have not seen. If you have seen it and I have not, I would like to know why.
291 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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