Debate contribution: Health Trusts Review
Debate contribution by Mr Robbie Butler on .
- MLA
- Mr Robbie Butler
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 21 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Health Trusts Review
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5742345
Read the official Assembly record
Text
No. If I were Superman and Batman rolled into one, it would be nice to pull something like that off. I know that the Member is coming from a good place. I have spoken to the permanent secretary about this. We have the ambitious cost-cutting exercise for the next couple of years. A lot of people are pushing that and talking about it in the same space as job cuts and so forth. It is not about that; it is about efficiencies. There are efficiencies that could be maximised by closer and better working relationships between trusts. We need to remove the silos. However, it could be hypocritical of us, as politicians, to ask the bodies that we look after to remove their silos, when we sometimes work in that way. I also look back to an example where I am not sure that we have seen the benefit. We had the review of public administration, but I am not sure that that has wholly paid off with the fiscal efficiencies that it was supposed to achieve. Similarly, I am not sure whether the Education Authority (EA), created through the amalgamation of the education and library boards, has achieved the efficiencies that everybody thought it would. If a Health Minister were to embark on something similar, it would be a step that would take a lot of working out and a lot of detail. You would need to be forensic and make no assumptions. When we interfere in how we provide health and social care, we need, at all costs, to improve it.
263 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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