Debate contribution: Independent Reconfiguration Committee

Debate contribution by Mr Robbie Butler on 7 September 2026.

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 5670155

Text

I thank the Member for Upper Bann. Mrs Dodds, thank you for your message: again, you were one of the first out of the traps. I recognise that I will get some "Dodds sandwiches" over the next seven or eight months, because the Member has a habit of saying something nice at the start, giving you something desperately difficult in the middle and, if she is in good form, maybe, finishing it off well. The question is really important, because, if I say that we are going to give our communities and constituents confidence, I have to deliver that. The committee will have a limited remit insofar as it will consider what are termed controversial or significant changes to our health system and the network that we are trying to establish. It will not be charged with any work wider than that. In fact, if I were not to refer any projects to it, it would not have any work to do, but members of the Health Committee in particular know that a plethora of challenges face the transformation and reset agenda. We have to be faithful to the pillars that Bengoa set out in 2016, but it is absolutely right that we put our head up every now and again, look at where we are, consider how far we have come and make sure that we are heading in the right direction. As I see it, the panel will give us a benchmark and a confidence-building institution, because, evidently, politicians sometimes just do not cut the mustard.
I must have missed the Member for North Antrim's text of congratulations
when I got the role of Health Minister. I was desperately disappointed.
He has my number?
He has more than my number
The Member for North Antrim, I am sure —
I invite this, guys, and I will do so over the seven or eight months that are left of the mandate, because iron sharpens iron, and I have to stand confidently on my words and the promises that I make. Last week, when I met the SOS Causeway group, it asked me similar questions to those of the Member for North Antrim, such as what commitment I would give on what would remain and what would be taken away, and I was absolutely candid and honest with it. I made no commitment other than to forensically interrogate the evidence, to forensically seek alternatives and to ensure that whatever is designed and delivered has the best outcomes and the confidence of the people, or the majority of the people, that it will deliver. After 12 years in politics, I recognise that, sometimes, not everybody gets exactly what they want. We have to remember that, even with a constrained budget, our health and social care system exists to make people healthy, to make them better and to give them dignity. We cannot break that contract. I do not intend to break it; in fact, I intend to deliver a new contract.

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

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