Debate contribution: Paediatric Pathology Services

Debate contribution by Mr Philip McGuigan on 13 January 2026.

MLA

Mr Philip McGuigan

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

13 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Paediatric Pathology Services

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5316296

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

The North does not have a paediatric pathology service. That has been the case since 2019, and it is a glaring, important deficit in the health service here. I will ask questions and make suggestions to the Minister later in my speech. At the heart of the debate, however, are not structures and strategies but families facing the unimaginable loss of a child. Since 2019, bereaved parents in the North have been forced to endure not only their grief but the added trauma of knowing that their child must be taken across the Irish Sea for a post-mortem examination, should one be required. At that time of unbearable loss, families are confronted with distance, delay, unfamiliar systems and the pain of separation. No parent should have to watch on as their child is transported away because our health system cannot provide what should be a basic compassionate service here. Following the resignation of the last specialist consultant in the field here, post-mortem examinations for babies and young children from the North have been carried out at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool. I acknowledge the professionalism, expertise and compassion of the staff at Alder Hey, as well as the dedication of our Health and Social Care (HSC) professionals here who support the families through the process, but the reality remains that the arrangement places an additional emotional and logistical burden on grieving families at an already unimaginably difficult time. For many families, travelling to Liverpool is not just distressing but overwhelming. It creates delays in funeral arrangements and places an emotional and financial burden on people who are already broken by loss. Parents have spoken of feeling powerless, excluded and retraumatised by a process over which they have no control. I recognise that the situation is driven in large part by a global shortage of the highly specialised skills required in paediatric and perinatal pathology, and I acknowledge that restoring a service here is made more challenging by the need to recruit three specialists simultaneously in order to establish a safe, sustainable and resilient service. There is no doubt that workforce pressures in the sector are significant. The Royal College of Pathologists, which I met recently, has highlighted the fact that there are only 52 consultant paediatric and perinatal pathologists in Britain, with up to 25% expected to retire within the next five years. Some regions across the water in England — the south-west and the Midlands — have no consultants in post, so it is clear that there are difficulties across these islands. However, recognising the scale of the challenge does not remove the responsibility to act with urgency, transparency and compassion to find a remedy. The Minister has previously stated that his Department has commissioned an evaluation of paediatric pathology services. It was undertaken by Queen's University with support from the Public Health Agency (PHA) and had input from key stakeholders, including Sands and Cruse Bereavement Support. I welcome the involvement of bereavement organisations in the process. It is vital to ensure the centrality of families' experiences, their voices and needs in shaping the delivery of services in the future. The Minister has also stated that all 21 recommendations in the report have been accepted and are being actioned. It would be helpful if the Minister, when responding to today's debate, could update the House on the detail of those recommendations and outline the progress that he has made to date in implementing them and, perhaps, commit to bringing forward an implementation plan that would set out clear time frames on how and when the essential service will be restored. I recognise that there is no quick fix to the issue, but it has been seven years, and there is a need to make progress. It is vital that we get a sense of what is happening in workforce planning and of what proactive recruitment measures are being taken, what training opportunities are available currently and how they can be made accessible to people here in the short term in the absence of the necessary training infrastructure. During my meeting with the Royal College of Pathologists, I was informed that a number of the people who are carrying out the service in Scotland and Liverpool come from the North, so we have people from here who are doing those jobs elsewhere. We need to get people from here able to practise here and provide the service here. New and emerging post-mortem methods, including digital pathways such as CT imaging, could also be utilised in some circumstances. Are they being explored? If so, to what extent? The Minister has also spoken about the potential for an all-island approach, referencing discussions with his Southern counterparts — the former Minister Stephen Donnelly and, more recently, Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Clearly, I welcome those discussions and again ask the Minister to give us an update on those discussions in his response to the debate. A joined-up paediatric pathology service on this island makes perfect sense. All-island cooperation has the real potential to form part of any sustainable, future model. Indeed, in previous health debates in the Chamber, it has been clearly evident that collaboration across the island can bring clear benefits to citizens the length and breadth of Ireland, particularly in areas requiring highly specialised expertise. We have already seen that work effectively in Altnagelvin's North West Cancer Centre and the children's cardiology unit at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. Today, I hope that the Minister can provide reassurance that tangible progress is being made in that regard, as discussions alone cannot become a substitute for decisive action. Paediatric and perinatal pathology is an essential service. It plays a vital role in providing answers, supporting learning and offering compassionate care to families who have experienced a profound and life-altering loss. I hope that, by bringing focus to the issue today, we can respectfully acknowledge the depth of grief carried by those families and commit to doing all that we can to lessen the burden placed on them when pathology services are required.

1,021 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:18 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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