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 5670147
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Chair of the Health Committee for what is, I am sure, the first of many questions that he will pose to me. Also, thank you for the welcome. I believe that we are facing in the same direction and that everyone in the Chamber is facing in the same direction. I have inherited and commend the Department for the 30,000 consultee responses from 2024. What was designed at that stage was the creation of the committee. We have to understand that this is not in response to anything that happened in any political space. It was very much on the departmental radar and being worked on a number of months before I came in. Evidently, however, we have significant challenges to face into, and this is a high-profile case. Last week, I spent half a day in Causeway, because I knew that I had to have a face-to-face conversation with the community and the clinicians. I reiterate the point that everybody is facing in the same direction. The clinicians want better outcomes for their patients, and the patients want better outcomes for themselves and their families. I believe that there is a solution, but what is missing at the moment is detail, and there are some challenges. I will bring those challenges to any report that comes before me and that, in my determination, hits the bar for the IRC. I am absolutely wedded to re-establishing the contract that has to exist with the communities that we serve, our taxpayers and the vulnerable people who may live further away from a hospital. I want them to understand the pathway and have confidence in the changes. What we are talking about is life and death.
287 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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