Member's statement: Winter Preparedness Plan

Member's statement by Mr Danny Donnelly on 7 October 2025.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

7 October 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Winter Preparedness Plan

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5164451

Read the official Assembly record

Text

All Members should agree that a winter preparedness plan published on 31 December 2025 is not just slightly delayed but a complete failure, yet, by the Department's own metric, according to the business plan that it presented to the Committee for Health last week, publishing the plan on the very last day of the year will still be marked amber and considered to be experiencing some delays but still on track to be met for the end of the year. That is a system that is designed to tick boxes, not to save lives. I know that the Minister of Health is probably sick of hearing me raise this, and, to some, it may sound inconsequential, as it is just another delayed plan, but I have lived the impacts. I have seen them at first hand, and I am telling him that it is not just a delay on paper. It will potentially lead to loss of life and to a loss of workforce. That is real. Last year, the winter preparedness plan was not published until mid-November, and the Minister will be well aware that pressures had started long before then. At the time, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine judged it as being "too little, too late". Publishing a plan at that stage of the year is simply inadequate. How can one claim to be preparing for a storm when already standing in the eye of it? We were promised a winter preparedness plan in August, then in September. It is now into October, and still there is no plan. Can we really trust the Department's commitments when that is the case, or are those commitments just vague promises that are designed to give the illusion of progress, when, in truth, targets are being missed and people are being harmed? The Minister disagreed with me yesterday when I said that delays in publishing the plan will have an impact on workforce retention. As a nurse, I must wholeheartedly disagree with him. Every consultation, every review and every report highlights the same challenges, and workforce is always one of the biggest ones, coming up again and again. Does the Minister really believe that the delay is not contributing to the problem? Does he really believe that leaving staff without a plan by publishing it late is not adding to the already crippling pressures on the workforce and pushing nurses and other healthcare staff out of the service? It may be just one issue from a long list of issues, but it still has a very real and damaging impact that should not be dismissed. Perhaps the Minister does not believe that the delay impacts on staff, but what about the impact on loss of life? The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that 818 excess deaths in Scotland last year were linked to long A&E waits. For Northern Ireland in 2022, it suggested that more than 1,400 excess deaths had occurred. We are two years behind on the data, and Scotland has three times our population, yet excess deaths here are approaching double what Scotland's are now. The resulting excess deaths and dangerous delays cannot be dismissed as just a late policy paper. This is not about paperwork or process, as the delay has real and hard-hitting consequences for our health service, our healthcare workers, our patients and the people whom we are here to represent. Every week without a plan means that patients are waiting longer and that staff are being pushed further, and that is resulting in unnecessary loss of life. Something needs to change, and I encourage the Minister to act with urgency.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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

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