Debate contribution: Executive Collapse: Health Services
Debate contribution by Mr Robbie Butler on .
- MLA
- Mr Robbie Butler
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 12 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Executive Collapse: Health Services
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5786349
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for his question. I spent the weekend feeling genuinely concerned about the future of this place and about the ramifications of, shall we say, a staged walkout or if Stormont were to cease. The evidence shows us that, when we do not have Stormont for two or three years and we have compromised Budgets, people come to harm. Successive Ulster Unionist Ministers of Health have not ducked the pressures. There are pressures and failings, but we are facing into them, and we are seeing some green shoots of recovery in elective care and waiting lists I have to go back to the issue of pay, because we cannot neglect the elephant in the room, which is public-sector pay and not just nurses' pay. It cannot be ignored that, if there were no functioning Executive, I would have limited powers even if I were to take on a caretaker role for five or six months. I would have to live within the resources that I had. I could not move to further transformation and reset. My imminent fear is about winter preparedness. I cannot be clearer about this: destabilisation of this place, in any sense, impacts on public service delivery; it really does. I do not want to prioritise subsets of what I am looking at, but there is absolutely no doubt that it would be almost impossible to deliver elective care and address the waiting lists. Significant spending decisions would be well beyond my remit. Workforce plans and safe staffing legislation, which are absolutely vital if we want to establish a safe workforce plan for future health and social care provision, would be beyond my remit. We need to ensure that we deliver those things in this mandate.
292 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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