Debate contribution: Craigavon Area Hospital: Redevelopment

Debate contribution by Ms Diane Forsythe on 1 April 2025.

MLA: Ms Diane Forsythe
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 1 April 2025
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Craigavon Area Hospital: Redevelopment
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4876651

Text

I am grateful to my colleagues for tabling this important motion. The DUP is clear that, when it comes to investing in our hospital network, no part of Northern Ireland should be left behind or disadvantaged. Regional balance is often mentioned in the Chamber, but it is important that that phrase is not just used in some political campaigns. We need to recognise what it means for healthcare for people in every corner of Northern Ireland. I am privileged to represent the people of South Down in this place. At every turn, I have taken the opportunity to make it clear that the people in my constituency should not be left behind. As it is a hugely rural constituency, people have to travel some distance to a hospital already. While some are in the South Eastern Trust area, the majority of people in South Down live in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust area and are served by Craigavon Area Hospital and Daisy Hill Hospital. Both have amazing staff, and I record my thanks to them. However, it is a disgrace that those hospitals have been left behind in capital investment for many years. Where the buildings are in bad shape, they do not best serve the patients or the staff, and they reduce the capacity to deliver healthcare. Where we see drives towards regionalised specialist services, with the backdrop of the financial pressures that we face and reduced capital budgets, I am incredibly concerned that the result of the continued underinvestment in Southern Trust hospitals will see services taken away from the area completely, with the predetermined excuse that the hospital buildings that are there do not have the capacity to house additional specialisms. Why should patients in the Southern Trust be faced with the potential of losing their local hospital or having their services and capacity reduced? Where is the regional balance in that? We need to see equity in healthcare provision across Northern Ireland. The people in the south-east of the Province deserve better. We have some of the most rural areas of Northern Ireland, with some of the longest distances to travel for healthcare, and the people of South Down and surrounding areas deserve investment in their hospitals. As my colleagues mentioned, in the last decade, the Southern Trust represented roughly 11% of the capital expenditure by trusts and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, the bulk of which was for preventative maintenance. Meanwhile, major injections have been made elsewhere. I remind the House that the Department of Health's failure to deliver major capital projects over a number of years has led to the waste of hundreds of millions of pounds, and the significant overspend on the maternity hospital, for example, has meant that hundreds of millions of pounds have had to be found. That money was not found out of thin air; it came from other areas in the Health budget, and it displaced much-needed capital investment in other areas. I would love to have seen that value of investment in the Southern Trust, in the development of Craigavon and Daisy Hill hospitals, but, no, it was applied to the overspend as part of the catalogue of £3 billion of overspend across the board on major capital projects reported by the Northern Ireland Audit Office. The lack of investment in Craigavon sends a terrible message to patients across South Down, Newry and Armagh, Upper Bann, Fermanagh and South Tyrone and Mid Ulster. I am glad to be joined in the Chamber today by my colleagues who represent those constituencies.
I thank the Member for her intervention. She makes a really important point. For those of us who represent very rural areas of Northern Ireland, it is important to remember that patients are at the heart of this and that their care needs to be at the forefront when we look at such things. The lack of investment in hospitals is felt most by those who need the care. In closing, I repeat the call from my colleague Diane Dodds and others that Craigavon Area Hospital be prioritised as part of the Department of Health's future capital plan. It is simply not feasible for constraints and deficiencies in current provision on the site to be ignored any longer. I look forward to the Health Minister's response.

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

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