Member's statement: Health and Social Care Transformation: Cross-party Compact
Member's statement by Mr Danny Donnelly on .
- MLA
- Mr Danny Donnelly
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 19 October 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Health and Social Care Transformation: Cross-party Compact
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5795313
Read the official Assembly record
Text
This month, we mark the 10-year anniversary of the Bengoa report. In 2016, Professor Bengoa described an "unassailable case for change" in the way that we deliver healthcare, and that case has only grown stronger over the past decade. Last week, Alliance held an event with representatives from across the sector to discuss Bengoa and our position 10 years on. The event highlighted the profound disappointment and frustration at how little Professor Bengoa's ambitious programme for change has been delivered in the time since its publication. We have half a million people on a waiting list; fewer GP practices to meet rapidly increasing demand; people's dying being associated with long waits in our A&Es; and agonising delays for the diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as cancer and mental ill health. Despite the Herculean efforts of our health and social care (HSC) staff, the system has deteriorated to such an extent over the past decade that we are now seeing service reconfiguration as a result of collapse, with the attendant risks to patient safety. That unsustainable situation will only get worse under the pressure of an ageing population, underlining the need for a step change in our approach to delivering health transformation. In the opening speech of the event, our party leader, Naomi Long, issued a direct call to leaders of the other Assembly parties to agree a cross-party compact on health and social care reform. Naomi spoke directly to Michelle, Gavin, Jon and Claire and stated that, if they are willing to sit round a table and agree a common way forward to fix our health and social care system, she will be there. The letters have been sent, and the ball is now in their court. Hopefully, they will engage fully in that process in good faith and in the interest of all those who rely on the healthcare system in Northern Ireland. Ill health does not discriminate. We have a responsibility to take party politics out of the debate and deliver on the ambitions of the HSC reform agenda on a collective, cross-party basis. Alliance is not prepared to sit back and watch as our health service continues to fall apart, patients continue to come to harm and staff continue to be driven out of the vocations that they love. We have a responsibility to our constituents to remove politics from the debate and take forward health reform on a collective, cross-party basis. Reform needs to happen now; otherwise, there will soon be nothing left to fix. Political leaders must come together, put practical solutions ahead of party politics and give people hope that a better health and social care system is possible.
I am hopeful that that call will be responded to in the spirit in which it was meant. There is an important window of opportunity, and, if we grasp it and put practical solutions ahead of party politics, we will give people hope that Stormont can finally deliver the health and social care system that we all need.
504 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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