Debate contribution: CAR T-cell Therapy

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 22 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Mike Nesbitt

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

22 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

CAR T-cell Therapy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5124497

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank Mr McGrath for tabling the motion and all the Members who have contributed. Like them, I begin by offering my deepest sympathies to the family of Catherine Sherry. I know that it has been a very difficult time for her husband, her three young sons, the wider family and her friends and community. Members will have heard me say many times that, in an ideal world, when somebody needs health and social care, they will get it at home and, if that is not possible, they will get it as close to home as possible.

I hope that Members will recognise that asking people to travel to Great Britain is, for me, counter-strategic and counter-intuitive, but it is currently the only option. It is my ambition to improve patient access to all cancer services, including CAR T-cell therapy, which we are considering today. Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy is a type of cell-based gene therapy that alters the genes in a person's T-cells, which are a type of white blood cell. In turn, that helps attack cancer cells. It is highly complex and innovative and a specialist cancer treatment. It has been specifically developed for individual cancer patients, in particular those with quite advanced cancers where other available treatments have failed. The therapy can have severe side effects and can be provided only in specialist cancer units that meet a detailed National Health Service specification. Given the very specialised nature of treatment, that therefore limits the options for available specialist centres, with those specialist centres currently located in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Following confirmation of eligibility for CAR T-cell therapy by an expert panel, patients here are referred to a specialist centre in Great Britain. The centres there are the only specialist centres that currently accept or have the capacity to treat patients from Northern Ireland. We have spoken to colleagues in the Department of Health in Dublin, and the issue is capacity. Mr McGuigan asked a question: the answer that I have is that it would take the Republic longer to increase its CAR T-cell capacity than it would take us to develop and replace ward 10 north at Belfast City Hospital. I can tell Members that we have had a North/South cancer and policy group since March 2023, about two and a half years. If, for example, the Shared Island Fund could be used to advance capacity, I would go there. I invite Mr McGuigan and his Committee to test the information that I have been given by officials, which is, to repeat, that we cannot do increase capacity until we have the new haematology ward at Belfast City Hospital — it looks as though we will not have it until 2030-31 — and that it will take the Republic longer to increase its capacity to take on board patients from Northern Ireland. I assure Members that I will continue to do all that I can to achieve safe and sustainable local service delivery for those services in as short a time frame as I can. Just under 700 new patients per annum are diagnosed with leukaemia and lymphoma in Northern Ireland. In answer to Mrs Dodds's question, the number of CAR T-cell patients from Northern Ireland treated in the past couple of years is as follows: 28 in the financial year 2023-24; 11 in the financial year 2024-25; and, to date, 11 in this financial year up to August. Some within that referral figure may, unfortunately, not proceed to treatment. As always, we must remind ourselves that those numbers represent real people: family members and loved ones living in our community. It is completely understandable that there is a sense of urgency about the situation, and it is a sense of urgency that I share. The ideal situation is for us to have CAR T-cell therapy services here so that patients can be treated closer to home and avoid the disruption to family life. I assure Members that work is ongoing to deliver that CAR T-cell therapy service here. It will be delivered as part of the planned wider cancer service development currently being progressed as part of a new regional haematology ward based at Belfast City Hospital. I am pleased to advise that I have approved the project to proceed and have made funds available, subject to final approvals from departmental officials, to allow development proposals to proceed as soon as possible. As I said, unfortunately, a project of that scale will take a long time. It is not expected to be completed until the financial year 2030-31. I know that there will be disappointment and frustration with that timeline, but I again assure Members that I want to see the ward progress as soon as possible.

I very much recognise the benefits of working jointly with the Republic of Ireland, and I have had good meetings with the previous and current Health Ministers in Dublin on those areas of health and social care where there are clear mutual benefits. Officials from both jurisdictions meet regularly. They consider opportunities for cross-border cooperation in cancer service provision. We want to ensure that we can collectively deliver the best possible services and patient outcomes for people across this island. The rate of development of specialist therapies for cancer, the complexity of new regimes and the standards for delivery make that more challenging than in other health areas. Unfortunately, health officials in the Republic have advised that their CAR T-cell therapy service, which, as Members have referenced, is based at St James's Hospital, Dublin, is currently operating at capacity and cannot support additional patients accessing those services from Northern Ireland on a cross-border basis, so please let us not raise false hope. The Republic is at capacity. We have also been advised by University Hospital Galway that plans to commence CAR T-cell therapy later this year are contingent on staff recruitment. That said, the benefits of providing specialist care closer to home are undisputed. In that regard, we will continue to scope and assess the feasibility of cross-border service models. My departmental officials will continue to work closely with cancer policy and clinical leads in the Republic on the development of opportunities for cross-border cancer services, consistent with the commitments in the All-Ireland Cancer Consortium (AICC) memorandum of understanding. Until we can provide that treatment ourselves and in the absence of capacity in the Republic, we will, I am afraid, continue to be reliant on services that are available in Great Britain, particularly in London and Manchester, and that are currently available to treat patients who live in Northern Ireland. That is the reality of the situation that we face today. Like many other Members, and like all the Members who contributed to the debate, I wish that it were different — of course I do — but I can only assure Members and those patients who are affected that I am doing all that is in my power to deliver a CAR T-cell therapy service in Northern Ireland as quickly and as safely as possible.

1,187 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:16 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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