Robin Swann pleads with colleagues to find a way of passing the budget

By PA

Health Minister Robin Swann said the failure of political parties to agree a three-year budget had “cruelly robbed” patients of the best chance in a decade to resolve the crisis in the health service.

The collapse of the powersharing Executive means Stormont cannot now strike a proposed three-year budget for the period 2022-25, a spending plan that envisaged a 10% cash uplift for the Department of Health.

Mr Swann said: “Anyone who suggests that there are quick and easy answers are doing a disservice to patients, they are doing a disservice to the staff and they are doing a disservice to the public.

“There is no solution which does not involve significant and long-term investment.

“The fact that we have limped from one single-year budget to the next for the last seven to eight years was just another reason our health service has been unable to keep up with demand.

“The real damage caused by the loss of additional funding that the draft budget would have provided cannot be stressed enough.

“I still hope that some budget certainty can be raised from those ashes but in the likely event it isn’t, patients and staff have been cruelly robbed of the best chance they have had in the last decade.

“You can’t rebuild capacity without the certainty of funding and without training and recruiting the necessary numbers of staff.”

Robin Swann issued a direct plea to his ministerial colleagues at Stormont to find a way forward in agreeing a budget.

He said: “Today I am pleading. I am pleading with all parties and my fellow ministers to work together and sort out the budget.

“Ideally by re-establishing the Executive, or failing that by finding some other way forward.

“Our waiting lists are appalling, but in the absence of funding and a functioning executive they will likely get worse instead of better.

“That is the abhorrent reality of the situation we are currently facing.”

(Health Minister Robin Swann said patients are being "cruelly robbed" of healthcare because of the lack of a healthcare budget)