Debate contribution: Waiting Lists: Effect on Winter Preparedness

Debate contribution by Mr Daniel McCrossan on 20 January 2026.

MLA

Mr Daniel McCrossan

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

20 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Waiting Lists: Effect on Winter Preparedness

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5348446

Read the official Assembly record

Text

This is one of the most crucial human issues that could come before the House. The motion speaks to the reality that people from across our society live with every day. The truth is that we have a health service that fails them at their most vulnerable moments. Our emergency departments are not just under pressure but overwhelmed, undermanned and underplanned, and it is patients who pay the price. I am inundated every day, as, I am sure, many Members are, with complaints about the state of emergency departments and our waiting lists, with elderly people being left on trolleys for hours, parents with sick children spending entire nights in emergency departments and ambulances sitting stacked outside hospitals because there is nowhere available in the hospital to offload the patients. That is not care being delivered with dignity; it is care being delivered out of desperation. People refuse to go to emergency departments because they are so sick and tired of the state of them and of having to sit in such conditions. The figures expose just how bad the crisis has become, and I do not believe that they paint the full picture, because not everybody attends those departments, particularly those who, unfortunately, are quite ill. In 2024-25, 132,741 patients waited in emergency departments for over 12 hours. That was up from 121,043 in the previous year. That is not a blip; it signals a system that is going backwards. Over the past five years, emergency department attendance rose by 28·9%, from just under 594,000 attendances a year to over 764,000 attendances a year. Demand has surged, yet planning has, clearly, lagged behind. Let us be clear and honest: the Executive have presided over hospital waiting lists that are not just the worst on these islands but among the worst in Europe. That is not something that any Executive should try to explain away. Behind those statistics are real people experiencing care without dignity. Nowhere is the problem more stark than in Altnagelvin Area Hospital's emergency department. It is cramped, with one toilet for the entire area, hard seats and no dedicated safe or child-friendly areas. We see people sitting on the floor for hours, families trying to comfort distressed children in overcrowded waiting rooms and elderly patients left exposed, exhausted and humiliated. I find it a deeply personal issue. Weeks before my mum, unfortunately, passed away, she cried because she was traumatised by what she had endured in the emergency department in Altnagelvin. I left her outside in the car with the heat on until such time as she could be seen in the hospital, because there was nowhere to sit in the emergency department. That is a system that is failing and is entirely inhumane. People should not have to endure that, yet we have been talking about this crisis for 10 years, and it is not improving. Years ago, the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council warned about hospital throughput, delayed discharges and the inevitable knock-on effect on emergency departments. Reports were written and warnings were issued, but winter came and, once again, the Executive were unprepared. Most galling, perhaps, is the silence from those with the greatest responsibility. The Executive, collectively, are responsible for that failure.

Too often, Sinn Féin and DUP Ministers can hardly mention the crisis because they are embarrassed about the situation, and they often want to put the blame on the Health Minister. The Executive are collectively responsible for the mess, and it is high time that they listened to people on the ground and put solutions in place that will take the pressure off the service. A system that strips people of dignity at their most vulnerable is not compassionate, and a system that plans for winter at the last minute is not being led.

The motion does not demand miracles; it demands honesty, planning and accountability from this place. It calls for winter pressure planning to begin earlier with clear timelines and published plans, not excuses delivered after the damage is done. Most important, it demands that we stop normalising the failure. It is not normal; it is unacceptable. Patients deserve dignity, our staff deserve support and the public deserve an Executive who take collective responsibility instead of trying to pass the buck. It is time to stop the talking. It is time to take action. It is 10 years on from Bengoa, and we are still having the same conversation. People have suffered enough. Fix the mess now.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:13 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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