Debate contribution: Public Finances

Debate contribution by Mr Danny Donnelly on 6 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

6 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Public Finances

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4255997

Read the official Assembly record

Text

It is a huge privilege to make my maiden speech here today, on the first sitting of what, I hope, will be a sustained and productive Assembly term. As MLAs in a functioning Assembly, we have the ability to effect more change in a day in this place than we will have in a lifetime once we walk out of those Doors. Like Mr Brett, I apologise to my parents, who have been up in the Gallery all morning. Before I get to the motion, with your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I will say a few things about my predecessor and my constituency of East Antrim. Roy Beggs will be known to many of you in the Chamber. He was one of the class of 1998 and served as an MLA for East Antrim from then until 2022, including as Deputy Speaker on two occasions. He was widely respected across the Chamber and the constituency. His continuing dedication to public life was reflected by his recent election to Mid and East Antrim Borough Council. I look forward to working with him and with all our other local elected representatives to deliver a better and more positive future for the area. It was a huge privilege to have been elected to the Assembly by the people of East Antrim and to join my good friend and colleague Stewart Dickson in doubling the Alliance representation in the area, working for everyone from Jordanstown to Cushendun. Like those of all 17 Alliance MLAs, our politics are liberal and progressive. We are committed to working towards a peaceful, prosperous and shared society. The constituency of East Antrim is a wonderful part of Northern Ireland. Nowhere else compares to the beautiful scenery of Islandmagee, the coast road and the glens of Antrim. I grew up in Larne and went to school at Garron Tower, outside Carnlough.

My wife, Maeve, and I moved back to Larne to raise our family in the town, and it is truly an honour to represent the constituency and its people in this place.

My career to date has been in healthcare, and I am a proud nurse. As such, I am acutely aware of the crises that are afflicting our health service. We have more than 500,000 cases languishing on waiting lists in a country of fewer than 2 million people. Many people, predominantly older people, wait years for routine operations such as hip or knee replacements and cataract surgery. They suffer unnecessarily as their condition worsens, often resulting in increased pain, loss of mobility, worsening eyesight and associated mental health conditions. We have a retention and recruitment crisis across the service, with more than 7,000 vacant posts, 2,000 of which are in nursing. The Royal College of Nursing recently published a survey showing that 83% of nursing staff in Northern Ireland said that, on their last shift, the actual number of nursing staff was not sufficient to meet patients' needs safely and effectively. As well as fair pay, safe staffing was a key factor for many striking nurses in the recent industrial action. It is something that I am passionate about, and I hope to see a safe staffing Bill delivered by the Assembly to protect patients and improve the working lives of nursing staff. Many of our healthcare staff feel overworked, burned out and undervalued, and that needs to change. Our accident and emergency departments are regularly full of patients waiting to be admitted to wards that have no beds available for them. Indeed, the wards regularly have extra patients lying in undignified corridor beds, pushed wherever there is space for them. Ambulances that cannot safely discharge patients to departments end up stacked outside with patients in the back for many hours at a time. We know that extended stays in A&E are associated with longer stays in hospital and even increased mortality rates. Overcrowding is a major threat to public health. There is a huge issue with how we care for older people in the community. There is a critical shortage of care packages, and that means that people who are well enough to be discharged from hospital end up staying as inpatients because their needs cannot be met at home. It is essential, therefore, that people are attracted into working in domiciliary care and not pushed out of it. We all know that we have to reform our health service, and the Bengoa report has been sitting on the shelf since 2016. All the main parties have pledged to support the Bengoa principles, and there has been a missed opportunity here. We could have been seven years into a 10-year programme of reform by now. We cannot miss another opportunity. Inaction is no longer a choice. There is no point transforming something if you cannot make it stable. We need funding for transformation and for stabilisation. This is, first and foremost, a finance issue, and I support the motion as all of our public finances, including the health service, need to be placed on a sustainable footing. The Executive need adequate resources to deliver effective public services. I also wish to congratulate Minister Swann on returning to the role that he held from 2020 and throughout the pandemic. Clearly, he is experienced and knowledgeable and is well respected across the health service. I know that the issues that I have highlighted and many others affecting the health service will be familiar to him. It is worth being clear from the outset that, where the Minister is willing to proceed with tough decisions to deliver on the transformation and improvement of health and social care, he will be able to rely on our party's full support. If we disagree, we will seek to be constructive. It would send a powerful message if all MLAs supported the motion as a signal of our intent to work together to improve public services for everyone in Northern Ireland.

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

Assessment

Not qualifying

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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