Debate contribution: PSNI: Pressure due to Health System Failings

Debate contribution by Mr Danny Donnelly on 1 December 2025.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

1 December 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

PSNI: Pressure due to Health System Failings

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5269514

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am not a member of the Policing Board, but I am an NHS nurse, so I declare an interest. I reassure the Minister and Members that this is not a "political punch" motion. It is disrespectful to people who have been in mental health crisis and have been harmed to suggest that it is. The heart of the motion is a straightforward point: when someone is in mental health crisis, they should be met by trained mental health professionals, not police officers who, through no fault of their own, are being sent to situations that require specialist clinical care. Right now, that is exactly what is happening. As Members have noted, the PSNI is taking more than 100 concern for safety calls every day, and almost none of those calls involves crime. They involve people who need mental health care, but instead of getting the mental health support that they need, they get a police response, because there is no one else available. I have seen many PSNI officers spend long periods in noisy A&E departments with people in crisis, and that is totally inappropriate. I agree with Trevor that that is the bit of the job that they do not feel that they should be doing, and it is not their favourite bit. I could have guessed what the Minister's response was going to be today to the calls to fund a mental health strategy: workforce shortages, funding pressures, competing priorities and no magic overnight fix. Yes, those are real issues, but they cannot be used as a catch-all forever. If workforce shortages is the point, we need to look honestly at the evidence. In 2013, the Northern Ireland Audit Office reported that mental health conditions were the leading cause of sickness absence across the entire public sector, including the trusts, and it warned that that long-term pattern was putting huge pressures on staffing levels. That was 12 years ago. We have not suddenly discovered that problem. Between 2018 and 2022, the Royal College of Nursing found exactly the same trend: mental health was the main reason for sickness absence. None of this is new. What is new is the scale of the crisis, and that is only going to continue to grow. On funding, as has been mentioned several times today, Health receives more than half the Executive's budget and is already £100 million into next year's allocation. I do not underestimate the challenges facing the Minister. Departments are already stretched to their limit, and we need joined-up working. One example of joined-up working that we on the Health Committee saw was when we visited the ambulance control centre. The South Eastern Trust and the Ambulance Service have worked together on a pilot scheme to redirect mental health calls in order to make sure that patients get the appropriate care that they need and talk to the appropriate person. That has reduced mental health admissions by 40%. We have a mental health strategy that could drive change and use early intervention to avoid crisis and that could be used to address one of the biggest workforce challenges that Northern Ireland faces, yet 80% of it remains shelved, and only 16% has been funded since 2021. That is just asking for the crisis to continue. Right Care, Right Person is not complicated. It is about providing appropriate care, and that means that the right professional responds to a right crisis. If we implemented it property, we could free up police time, with more than one million police hours saved per year, reducing risk for individuals and making the system safer and more humane for everybody involved. The motion is not about blaming anyone on the front line. It is about facing up to what is happening and accepting that we cannot continue like this. People in crisis deserve proper care. Police officers deserve to focus on policing, and the Department of Health needs to implement Right Care, Right Person. Nuala McAllister opened the debate and asked for clarity on the full implementation of the Mental Capacity Act 2016. She mentioned the four-week survey that highlighted the fact that 8,000 hours of PSNI time were spent on mental health calls, but she stated that that is not the fault of front-line healthcare staff. Keith Buchanan introduced the DUP amendment, which we support, with a few, small tweaks. He said that it was not an appropriate use of resources and highlighted the fact that waiting with a patient in A&E for 14 hours in order to get a mental health assessment was not a good use of police resources. He also said that Northern Ireland spends less per head on mental health services than anywhere else in the UK, despite having the highest levels of mental health illness. Linda Dillon said that PSNI officers are not trained or resourced to deal with mental health crises. She asked a question that I very much agree with: who is the right person to care for someone who is in a mental health crisis? That is the person who should respond. Linda also said that Right Care, Right Person is a clear and compassionate approach. Alan Chambers said that the Assembly was casting broad criticisms over healthcare workers' heads and that the motion was a "political punch". I disagree entirely with that. The motion is not about blaming Health. Alan also said that we brought forward the motion for political reasons. That is not the case at all. The issue has been talked about for years. The PSNI and the Policing Board have lobbied for the Right Care, Right Person model, and it is already functioning in other parts of the UK. Colin McGrath said that it was impossible to place the police in a situation when they are making clinical decisions at a roadside and that it existed because of gaps in the system at the minute. Pathways are fragmented for people in need. Right Care, Right Person does not need to be invented, because it already exists. Órlaithí Flynn said that it was not sustainable or acceptable that the PSNI had become the point of contact for people in mental health crisis. It is not fair on the PSNI, and it is not fair on the person who is in crisis. Cheryl Brownlee said that the PSNI cannot continue to act as a service of last resort. She referred to the PAC report on mental health in Northern Ireland, which stated that 17,500 people are on waiting lists, and said that that was unacceptable. People do not remain static on waiting lists, as I am sure that the Minister is aware. They tend to get worse when on a waiting list. While waiting for care, people tend to deteriorate and get sicker. We need to see vulnerable people getting the right care at the right time. Connie Egan said that this is not about removing the PSNI entirely from mental health calls but removing them from inappropriate calls. Vulnerable people need to be put first. Doug Beattie agreed with the approach but wanted to hear from the Minister of Justice on this. He said that he too had been touched by suicide — I am very sorry to hear that, Doug — and said that it is a societal issue. He also highlighted the need for a joined-up approach. Jon Burrows, previously a PSNI officer, said that the PSNI was under-resourced by the political class and that it was always dealing with vulnerability. He said that —.

Yes, certainly.

1,263 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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