Debate contribution: Oakridge Social Education Centre, Dungannon.
Debate contribution by Mrs Deborah Erskine on .
- MLA
- Mrs Deborah Erskine
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 13 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Oakridge Social Education Centre, Dungannon.
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5790030
Read the official Assembly record
Text
A lot of Members do not want me to talk for 10 minutes, but thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank my constituency colleague for securing the Adjournment debate. I will probably go off script. How we treat our most vulnerable shows how much we care. This has been a long-running saga. Expectations have been raised and then hopes have been dashed about a new build, the facilities and the need for them. That does not reflect well on how we treat our most vulnerable and the needs that exist in the community. I will not rehearse much of the argument that my constituency colleague Mr Gildernew made, but I am sure that my constituency colleagues will attest to the fact that investment in social care is lacking in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency, which I represent. We hear continually from parents about the need to expand some of the provision that is there. The system is creaking, and the difficulties that present themselves are manifold. I pay tribute to the professionalism of the staff at Oakridge and acknowledge how they continue in the facilities that they have, because the situation has been long-running and frustrating. It has been frustrating for the staff, the parents and everybody else who has been involved in the process. At the heart of the issue is understanding why business cases have come and gone and why we are not any further forward. We know that funding pressures are part of that. Minister, I implore you to look at this again, because, as Mr Gildernew has said correctly, it is unfair that it gets subsumed into everything else. There are people and service users behind this, and you will know that acutely from all the services for which you have responsibility as Minister. You have an awful lot of mounting pressures on your desk, and I get that, but considering that we are over a decade on, the delay does not go down well in the constituency that I represent, Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Minister, I would therefore like some clear and transparent answers today on why we are still in the situation that we are in, with no new build and no prospect of one. Hopefully, you can make a nice announcement today. What are the blockages, and not just around the funding, that are stopping the new build from happening? Do business cases need to be revisited? What else do we need to do to ensure that progress is made?
418 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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