Debate contribution: Day Centre Transport Services: East Belfast

Debate contribution by Mr David Brooks on 3 March 2026.

MLA

Mr David Brooks

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

3 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Day Centre Transport Services: East Belfast

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5435143

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Like others, I thank my party colleague Joanne Bunting for securing the Adjournment debate. She articulated well the issues and what Edgcumbe means to the families who use the service. While I appreciate that the context for the debate is the wider issue of day-care centres in East Belfast, my office has been contacted by families with relatives who attend that day centre, and everything that has been spoken about so far rings true. I appreciate that the debate comes after the Minister's visit that was hosted by my party colleague and attended by Andy and Gavin. I acknowledge that important engagement with families. Families with relatives attending Edgcumbe understand the scale of the financial pressures that the Department faces. They are not naïve about the fiscal realities of the health system. They recognise the difficult decisions that must be made, yet, like many others, they are weary of hearing the same explanation year after year. I understand that one gentleman showed the Minister a letter from 2018 that outlined the financial pressures at that time. Eight years on, the language remains familiar, with families waiting to hear, day by day and week by week, whether the bus service will go ahead. When an issue persists across nearly a decade, reference to financial pressures ceases to reassure and instead begins to sound like permanence. We know that Northern Ireland has not been funded as it should be. We know that my party leader has repeatedly made the fiscal case at Westminster. Limited budgets, however, do not suspend decision-making. A system that contracts each time pressure mounts is not resilient but, rather, is left exposed. In this case, the bus transport workforce model cannot absorb predictable absence, be it annual leave, sickness or turnover, without reducing the service. That exposes three underlying problems. The first problem is operational instability. The bus service system is overly reliant on perfect conditions and has little resilience built into the model. If one bus driver takes annual leave, if someone is off sick or if recruitment takes longer than expected, the system falters. In its current format, the bus service does not have enough built-in flexibility or contingency to absorb normal, everyday pressures, and that fragility has been shown for years. The second problem is ineffective mitigation. In a letter issued by the Health Minister to the families following the Edgcumbe meeting, reference was made to the shortage of bus drivers being recorded on the trust's risk register. That is not insignificant. It has been identified as a material risk to service delivery. It is recognised and is reviewed, yet it remains unresolved. The purpose of the risk register is not to catalogue the difficulty but to reduce exposure. A risk should trigger action, not simply observation. It should prompt a structural response, not a procedural repetition. If the instability of the bus service has continued across multiple biannual reviews, one of two conclusions must follow: either the mitigation strategy has not been effective or the underlying cause has not been adequately addressed. The third problem is that the recruitment model is not delivering. There are competing pressures in the local labour market. As we have heard, comparable driver roles in other sectors, including the Education Authority and Translink, offer more attractive pay or greater flexibility, and that cannot be ignored. We have heard that you cannot expect those who are offered better terms to stay. Recruitment campaigns are repeatedly undertaken. While there will be interest from some potential employees, the total square sum making it from initial interview to completion dwindles to nothing. That suggests that the model is not aligned with market conditions. Advertising the same posts under the same terms does not overcome the competitiveness issues. The response from the Department of Health needs to be fundamentally readdressed. As the DUP spokesperson for education, I regularly visit schools and have informal conversations with school bus drivers. Some are semi-retired but still feel that they have something to contribute. They are experienced, licensed and capable, but what they are not seeking is rigid, full-time employment. That reality points to an opportunity. If there is a pool of semi-retired or part-time bus drivers who are willing to work one or two days a week, it becomes a question of whether the trust's recruitment model is flexible enough to attract that kind of worker. As I understand it, the structure in the Department of Health — I heard my colleague speak about zero-hours contracts, and I bow to her knowledge of that — accommodates only those in fixed, full-time roles and excludes precisely the kind of workforce that could provide resilience.

It is not simply about filling vacancies but about redesigning a model that has, over the years, shown that it cannot withstand ordinary pressures. Families are not asking for perfection; they are asking for reliability. When that is missing, disabled adults lose access. If the bus is not running, they do not get to the day-care centre, meaning that they miss out on structured support and lose routine and social interaction disappears. The impact does not stop there, however. The wider circle of care is affected. Families lose what for many of them is their only opportunity for respite. Disabled adults' extended confinement at home without routine and structured support can lead to heightened anxiety, distress and behavioural challenges. Frustration builds, regulation becomes harder and pressure increases not only for the individual but for the whole family. After years of instability, it is no longer about explanation but about action. Families have shown patience and engaged constructively and understand the financial constraints, but understanding does not remove the need for reliability. The bus service is not an optional add-on; it is a gateway to support, structure and stability for disabled adults and their families. The time has come to move from acknowledgement to reform and to build a transport service that is resilient by design and not vulnerable to circumstance.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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