Debate contribution: Health Service Transformation: Funding

Debate contribution by Miss Órlaithí Flynn on 17 September 2024.

MLA

Miss Órlaithí Flynn

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

17 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Health Service Transformation: Funding

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4537030

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank Diane and Alan for tabling the motion and the Alliance Party for the amendment that it has submitted. As we know, tackling hospital waiting times and the backlog of patients awaiting care requires long-term solutions, including the training and recruitment of more doctors, nurses and specialists, and, most importantly, tackling health inequalities and helping people to live healthier lives. However, how are we going to do that when, essentially, at the moment, the entire Health budget is spent on acute services and time-critical cases? If we want to move towards preventing illness rather than treating it, we need to invest in primary and community care. Minister, we heard from your officials at the Health Committee last week about some really great examples of transformation that are in action at the moment, including elective care centres, rapid diagnosis centres and the mega clinics, but, like those clinics, longer-term reform must continue. Central to that reform is addressing the health inequalities and trying to improve our health through primary care and care in the community. I am really pleased that the Minister has stated previously and publicly that his prime area of focus is health inequalities, but we need to see additional investment and physical interventions to really help to tackle them. We talk about health inequalities very often in the Chamber. The Minister recently gave us a shocking example of what a health inequality actually looks like and what it means in reality to our constituents and the people we represent: the unacceptable fact is that women in our most deprived communities can expect to live 14 fewer years in good health than those in the least deprived communities. I am sure that we all wholeheartedly agree with the Minister of Health that, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, that really is not acceptable. That is what transformation needs to be about. It is not about boxing it into one issue, such as the fact that women in the most deprived communities are living 14 fewer years in good health; it is about all the issues that we are talking about. That is what transformation and health inequalities are about. What more can be done in the immediate future with the limited resources that we have available to us from the British Treasury to try to stop that depressing reality? I welcomed the Health Minister's announcement in July that covered the planned initiatives that we are going to see, hopefully, over the next few months, including the Live Better initiative, which is going to try to bring more targeted support to communities in terms of screening, vaccination, mental health, emotional well-being support, and blood pressure and cholesterol checks. However, if we are not moving forward in tandem with trying to support our primary care in the transformation process, how are we going to fully and genuinely implement all those great initiatives around screening and vaccination etc? The point was made to me by a GP in my local area recently that, if we try to put in place additional screening, mental health supports, additional services and targeted services, they still need to be backed up with the staff and personnel to try to meet the people who need the help and follow-up support. GPs and primary care must be supported to lead on health reform and transformation. One way to accelerate that change and transformation is to deliver on multidisciplinary teams for all GP areas across the North. At the moment, only seven out of 17 have access to MDTs. We were made aware at the Health Committee last week that a transformation bid is going to be submitted to try to extend those MDTs across all areas. That is true transformation, and it is a good start to transformation. The Minister will be aware that the Health Committee has requested sight of the proposals for the hospital reconfiguration. Again, that is going to be a massive step forward in transformation. I end my remarks by talking about one of the biggest missed opportunities around transformation, dealing with health inequalities and trying to help people to live happier and healthier lives: the continued and stark underinvestment in mental health, suicide prevention and addictions. I am not trying to bring a negative to the conversation; our underinvestment in mental health has been a legacy issue over many years, but when we are talking about trying to prevent harm and ill health —

— and trying to support people, those issues really need to be looked at. Perhaps, even given the constrained finances, we could get an increase in that budget.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:10 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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