Member's statement: Heart Conditions in Women

Member's statement by Mrs Linda Dillon on 19 May 2025.

MLA

Mrs Linda Dillon

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

19 May 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Heart Conditions in Women

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4967858

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I will speak about the British Heart Foundation's commentary on 'Good Morning Ulster' this morning on the results that show increasing numbers of people being diagnosed with heart failure, and I am glad that the Minister is in the Chamber to hear this. The increasing number of diagnoses is very concerning. I know that you have a history of heart problems, Minister, so you will be well aware of the matter. We now have the highest number ever, and those are not records that we want to set. I was extremely concerned by the comments made by the young woman, Mary McFarland, who spoke on the radio show. She is in her early 40s with three young children. She was actively having a heart attack but was told by health professionals that she was not and that it was a panic attack. It is a common experience for all women, but particularly for young women, to be told, when they are having heart failure or a heart attack, that it is an anxiety attack or a panic attack. They are diagnosed with everything but what is actually happening to them. We need some education on that. We need to educate ourselves so that we understand the symptoms, but our health professionals and others around us also need to understand that women have heart failure and heart attacks. More women die from heart and circulatory issues than from all female cancers combined. We need to take on and challenge the issue, and t needs to be taken on as part of a women's health strategy. I am sure that the Minister is well used to listening to me speak about that, but it is important. As I said, we do not want to set records such as this. Thankfully, Mary was taken to the hospital by a friend. She was taken not by the ambulance or by the health professionals who came out to see her but by a friend, and her life was saved. She had three young children. It could easily have been lights out for Mary and a family member lost. I want people to know that and to educate themselves, and I want to ensure that our health professionals are educated. I did not intend to make this remark, but I feel that I must, before I sit down. As a woman who has often been afraid, I have never ever been afraid of a transgender woman or a black man. It is white men from here whom I have been afraid of. Do you know why? It is because 30 women have been murdered in the North in the past five years, and all of them, without exception, were murdered by white men from here.

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

Assessment

Qualifying Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Qualifying

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

Most of the statement is substantive health advocacy: it draws on a radio interview to argue that women's heart attacks are often misdiagnosed as "a panic attack", and calls for professional education and a women's health strategy. The closing remark, which the speaker says they "did not intend to make", leaves that subject to take up the wider argument over whether trans women and migrants are a threat. It rejects that framing, but answers it by naming another group defined by race and sex, "white men from here", as the people to fear. The rubric lists portraying men in general as dangerous as an indirect attack, so this final line meets the identity-framing and dog-whistle tests even though it rests on a real statistic about femicide.

Public interest or divisiveness

The heart-health content clearly serves the public interest by raising a documented service failure and proposing practical remedies. The final remark partly opposes hostility towards trans women and black people, which is legitimate, and draws on serious figures on violence against women. But it carries on the same identity argument by reassigning the threat to a racial and sex group, and it is inserted into an unrelated health statement for effect. Both elements are substantial, so the record is mixed.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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