Debate contribution: Bangor and Newtownards Minor Injury Units: Closure

Debate contribution by Mr Colin McGrath on 30 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Colin McGrath

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

30 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Bangor and Newtownards Minor Injury Units: Closure

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4487808

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The beauty of an Adjournment debate is that you can never work out where it is going to go in the politics and messages that were previously relayed. Obviously, I am not from the North Down and Ards area. I am part of the South Eastern Trust area, and I am just surprised that I am not here talking about closures to Downe Hospital, which has been the norm over the past 20 years when it comes to discussions about the South Eastern Trust. On this occasion, it is with relief for my area that we are talking about somewhere else. Maybe being just one step back from what is happening on the ground, and from maybe the more upcoming political agendas that there may be, I can understand and appreciate the difficulties of people not liking change. People do not like it when a service is closed and taken away. As I say, we have had plenty of experience of that. I have some sympathy, I suppose, for the residents of Bangor, which is quite a distance away. Maybe slightly less sympathy for those in Newtownards because, when it comes to the removal of services from Downe Hospital, I would love if there were just four or five miles on a dual carriageway point-to-point to connect me from one service to the other. Where I can understand that there are difficulties in understanding this for people from Ards and Bangor is that the nature of this is minor injury units. The thing is, they can quite often be provided locally and quite close to where people are. It is that lack of understanding as to why you have to travel 10 miles or a number of miles to be able to get what are some of the most basic health interventions. I understand and agree with the whole process of transformation. I am certainly supportive of transformation on a wider, greater, bigger basis, but we desperately need to see that road map. We need to know where we are going, because if we know where we are going, there is a better chance that people will get behind it and support it. When we look at an issue such as the closure of minor injury units, or the changes that there have been at other places such as Lagan Valley Hospital and Downe Hospital, we do not know what the overall road map is. We know just that we have services that are being taken away but do not know what it is going to be part of in the greater scheme of things. That is a challenge for the Department and the trust, but it is one that I would love to see them being able to stand up and do. If we can get that sense of transformation, you know that you are losing service x but that it is going to be replaced nearby and is going to be a better service and you, in return, will also get something different in your area. In that way, we can keep patients and staff happy and keep the public on board. Unfortunately, the process has been a little bit like others. We feel that the service is being closed down but that no accommodation has been made for additional traffic and car parking. We know that staff are being moved and are not necessarily that happy about it. We know that consultations can often be loaded — that is the nature of them — but people who go into such a process feel aggrieved if it does not go the way in which they want it to go. I would like to see a greater road map for a transformation that we can be part of. The medical experts are out there, and it is critical that we listen to them. I sometimes worry, however, because, from what I remember them saying 20-odd years ago, if we were to talk about taking on board proper medical evidence about hospital services in Northern Ireland from those qualified to give it — I have said this before — we would end up with a super-duper hospital on stilts in Lough Neagh with six roads, one leading into each of the counties. Everybody would be able to access it, all the services would be under one roof and nobody would be at a deficit as a result. That, however, is not the reality. We are trying to retrofit the system that is there. I appreciate that the trust has its difficulties. I would love to see it be able to deliver locally that which it can deliver locally but also provide a much better system if it has to centralise it.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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