Official Report: Tuesday 20 January 2026

Ms Finnegan: I acknowledge the publication of the 'Public Media Ireland: a new PSM Organisation for a New Country' report, which researchers from Ulster University and Dublin City University produced. The report examines the future of public service broadcasting in the context of constitutional change on the island. The report is a timely and important contribution to a growing conversation, not only about constitutional features but about how our shared public institutions may evolve to meet the needs of a modern, diverse and inclusive society. The report's launch reflected the level of political and public interest in those questions.

The research highlights long-standing issues with which people across the island are all too familiar, such as access, fairness and equality in public service broadcasting. For many years, people in the South have been unable to access BBC content, while people in the North have faced barriers to accessing RTÉ programming. There have also been persistent concerns about geoblocking, particularly of major sporting events and moments of national and cultural significance. Those are not abstract problems. Instead, they affect how people engage with culture, sport, news and public life. They shape who feels included and who feels left out.

One of the report's most striking findings is that a preference was expressed for the establishment of a new all-island public service broadcaster in the event of constitutional change, rather than simply extending or adapting existing systems, which were never designed to serve the whole island equally. That is a significant finding, and it speaks to the opportunity that change, if it comes, could present, not simply to rearrange what already exists but to design institutions that, at their core, reflect lived experiences, diversity of identity and the public interest in transparency and accountability.

Although the report focuses on media, the issues that it raises resonate far beyond broadcasting. Similar questions arise in healthcare, education and public services more broadly about access, equality and public confidence. I also welcome the continued engagement between the report's authors and Senator Conor Murphy, including plans for further discussions of its findings in the Oireachtas next month. That engagement is important if the report's research is to inform public debate meaningfully.

The report should be seen as a starting point, not an end point, and as an invitation to wider discussion with workers, communities, media professionals and the public about what a shared media future would look like. Those conversations matter because public service broadcasting plays a vital role in democratic life and in how people across this island understand one another.

Mr Buckley: I will use my time this morning to pay tribute to the life of a remarkable young man from County Armagh, Blake McCaughey. On Saturday, I read the tribute from his mother, Christine:

Blake was, in every sense, an inspirational figure. From a young age, he lived with a rare and complex medical disorder, facing challenges that most of us can scarcely comprehend. Over the course of his life, Blake endured hundreds of medical procedures, yet, through every trial, every hospital stay and every difficult day with his courageous family by his side, Blake met that adversity with extraordinary courage, resilience and grace. His bravery was humbling to anybody who watched him. His strength was nothing short of remarkable.

Blake's life was filled with passions and purpose. He was a devoted superfan of Belfast Giants, and, in turn, he was deeply cherished by players, coaches and supporters alike. His love for the team reflected his love for life: wholehearted, loyal and full of joy. For more than a decade, Blake was an esteemed member of Portadown True Blues flute band. To his band family, Blake was a shining light, a friend, a brother and a source of pride whose presence will never be forgotten. Those who saw over the weekend the outpouring of love from the wider band fraternity will know that that was nothing short of remarkable. Blake's wheels were recognisable to anybody who was on the parade. Whether in local towns or at major demonstrations, Blake was always there.

Above all, Blake loved his family. To his proud parents, Christine and Andrew, and to his adoring sister, Pixie, who stood by him every step of the way, I extend my deepest condolences on behalf of the Assembly. Your love for Blake was foundational and was a strength. On behalf of everyone who had the honour of knowing Blake and to encounter that ray of positivity, thank you for a life well lived.

Ms K Armstrong: I stand today at a critical moment. This contribution is to do with funding not from the Northern Ireland Executive or any of the Northern Ireland Departments but from the Northern Ireland Office. The transition from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to the new local growth fund should have been an opportunity to build on what works. Instead, we face a funding cliff edge that threatens people, communities, employers and the very services that support our economic recovery.

The Northern Ireland Office has made a 64% cut to the programmes that will tackle economic inactivity. A 64% cut is a significant amount of money for organisations that are helping those the furthest from work into work and supporting them during work. I have heard that up to 11,000 people will not now have those services. It will dismantle what has been built up over a number of years by the community and voluntary sector to enable us as a government to provide access to employment for people who have difficulty getting into work. We have the highest economic inactivity rate, so such funding is particularly important to us. However, the decision taken by the Northern Ireland Office to continue to deliver a programme that did not have any Northern Ireland input or say by the Minister for Communities or the Northern Ireland Executive means that a programme has come forward with a 64% cut, where the majority of the money will be spent on capital, not on the skilled people who help others to get into work. Those decisions have been taken without consultation, impact assessment or regard for Northern Ireland's unique economic context. That is not partnership, it is not the co-design that we want to have for this place and it is not sustainable.

I am concerned that the Northern Ireland Office has still not allowed Northern Ireland to have a say in the future of this important funding stream. I am also very aware of the organisations out there that will be now be looking to the Northern Ireland Executive, at a time of deep financial crisis and very tight Budgets, to find the financial support to fill that gap. I do not know where that money is going to come from. The Northern Ireland Office took its decision, and we are left with the consequences.

Mr Beattie: Last week, a tribunal found that the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust had subjected eight Darlington nurses to harassment, violated their dignity, humiliated them and created a degrading and hostile environment. That was in the case of a transgender woman, a biological male, being allowed to use their changing facilities, so that they had to change in front of him. I add that the same tribunal found absolutely no case against the individual transgender woman. However, it still had a major effect on those nurses from Darlington. For me, it was a common-sense judgement, and it is going to have ramifications right across the NHS, including here in Northern Ireland.

Of course, because I raise this, I will be labelled a transphobe or told that I am in a culture war, because that is what people say. However, the reality is that I want protections for our transgender community. I want to make sure that we have services for them, including ensuring that all the health services that they require are in place. However, none of this should be at the detriment of women. Women deserve to have their own space, free from men. Men should not have the right to go into a woman's space. Women should not be made to change in front of a man. If women ask for intimate care from another woman in a hospital setting, that should be accommodated where it can be. It makes absolute sense.

We have lost sight of what we expect for women throughout the United Kingdom. Of course, we have the Supreme Court ruling that identifies your sex as being your biological sex at birth, and we need to understand and accept that. Some 72% of people in Northern Ireland agree with that Supreme Court ruling, and 72% of people in the Irish Republic also agree with it. Therefore, we need to adhere to it. Nothing should get in the way of ensuring the rights of women and those of the transgender community. They are not mutually exclusive. We need to make sure that we record data correctly because, as the review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender found, by using the term "gender" instead of the word "sex", we are skewing the whole statistical analysis of the issue that we face. I have already raised that with the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.

Mr McCrossan: Yesterday, the First Minister and the deputy First Minister stood in the House, praising what they described as the great record of delivery by the shambolic Executive. That is quite contrary to what I hear and see on the ground, and I am sure that that goes for others in the House as well. Every week in my constituency, I meet people who are looking not for miracles but for the basics: a hospital appointment that arrives on time, a home that is warm and affordable, a road that is safe and a system that works for them when life goes wrong. Increasingly, I have to look them in the eye and explain that the system run by the disastrous Executive is continually failing them with their distractions and sham fights over things that do not actually change people's lives.

The Stormont Executive are failing, not just in theory but in real life. The human cost is absolutely immense. I meet parents whose children have waited for years for assessments, watching their confidence in education slip away while they go through endless waiting lists and missed opportunities. I meet elderly people who are in pain, waiting for months just to see a consultant and years for treatment, while their quality of life quietly erodes. I meet families who are trapped in overcrowded and unsustainable housing. They are doing everything right and working hard but have nowhere to turn.

Those are not isolated cases. They are the lived reality of thousands of people whom we represent; people who live and work hard right across our communities and are suffering the consequences of complete and utter incompetence by the Executive. We were promised delivery and a Programme for Government that would make life better. Instead, we have drift, delay and excuses, and a constant sense that the urgent is always pushed aside for the politically convenient. Waiting lists are among the worst in Europe, housing stress is at crisis levels and mental health services are stretched beyond breaking point, yet there is no agreed multi-year Budget, urgency or sense that the Executive are putting the interests of our people first.

That failure is not abstract: its profound consequences are being felt acutely in all our communities. Those are unifying problems that need to be resolved for the common good. Failure costs people their health and their dignity. In some cases, unfortunately, it has cost people their life. The public are not stupid. They know when politics is focused on point-scoring instead of problem-solving. They know when leadership is absent. They are losing faith in this place as a result. Stormont exists to serve our people, not to manage decline or defend underperformance. Doing nothing is a choice. Delay is a decision. Every day that passes without action is another day when our people pay the price. People deserve so much better than that. They deserve honesty, urgency and delivery. Above all else, they deserve an Executive who remember who they are meant to serve.

Mr Gildernew: I take the opportunity to, once again, raise the existential crisis that is facing our community and voluntary sector. As Members will know, 31 March 2026 will see the end of the Shared Prosperity Fund. As a result, thousands of jobs are now at risk. I remind Members that the Shared Prosperity Fund is one of the most significant levers that we have in tackling economic inactivity by providing thousands of people with the skills and training that they need to re-engage with the workforce. Not only are those services a lifeline for many vulnerable people but they support our economy by increasing growth and productivity whilst reducing our public spending on social security.

The proposed local growth fund, which is due to replace it, is wholly inadequate and will deliver devastating cuts to vital front-line services. On my way into the Chamber this morning, I literally bumped into a leading member of the East Belfast Mission, which, in its own words, offers:

I am being told that its employability service could be reduced from 15 people to three. That will affect the most vulnerable people. The First Steps Women's Centre in my constituency, which provides support for some of the most vulnerable women who come into our country, is also having its services slashed — as are all groups — by the same amount. Yesterday, at a training and development session in the Building, I learned that 82% of part-time workers are women. One third of women are so-called economically inactive. That is actually economic disadvantage and discrimination.

The British Government have promised, time and time again, that they would fully replace European funding that is lost as a result of Brexit. Time and time again, they have absolutely failed to live up to their word. The community and voluntary sector has been warning for many years that, unless the British Government changed their approach, that was likely to happen. Now, we are a matter of weeks away from the cliff edge, and disaster seems unavoidable. Many employees in the sector have started to receive their redundancy notices, informing them that their jobs will no longer be funded beyond 31 March. First and foremost, my thoughts are with all those who are affected by those cuts — nobody deserves to be treated in that way — and, secondly, with the people who so badly need those services, from which we all benefit. My thoughts are with them. Let me be clear: those shameful cuts need to be reversed now, and the thousands of jobs in the community and voluntary sector need to be protected.

Almost a decade ago, we warned that leaving the EU would bring economic and political chaos to these islands and that we would be financially worse off as a result. Unfortunately, that is now the reality that we are living in. Time and again, the people of the North suffer the consequences of harmful decisions that are taken in London by British Governments who, to be frank, neither think nor care about us. More and more people are rightly coming to the conclusion that it is time to move forward in a new Ireland.

Ms Forsythe: Nurses in our health system are amazing people who are dedicated to our care at our times of most need. They are widely considered by onlookers to be overworked and underpaid, but, my goodness, they go well beyond the call of duty while providing incredible care in hugely pressurised circumstances. We heard last week about how many attacks they sustain in the line of duty.

It has been horrific to watch how some of our nurses have been treated. They have been attacked and ridiculed by those in authority in the NHS under a woke agenda. You have only to look at the Darlington nurses, who, in their highly pressurised clinical work environments, want to go to their single-sex changing area to get changed in privacy at the end of a hard day. When they raised concerns because that was no longer a single-sex safe space for them, they were ridiculed by management. I commend them for standing up for their privacy and common sense in the workplace, and for their tribunal victory. They were right to stand their ground, and they showed immense integrity and courage.

There is a pattern. Jennifer Melle, an NHS nurse, is facing ongoing persecution because she referred to a biological male and convicted sex offender as "Mr". She has been suspended for two years, unable to work, and is being threatened with revocation of her licence, which would leave her unable to practice. Despite the fact that that person lunged at Jennifer and racially abused her, Jennifer is somehow the one who is under the microscope. People are afraid to speak up because of how Jennifer has been treated. Oppression and expression is not consistent with either biological fact or freedom of speech. Jennifer has done nothing wrong.

We will not stay silent. We stand with Jennifer and with others who find themselves in that position. We think of her. We also think of the Darlington nurses. There is a clear pattern. It must be challenged now. It is time to fight back. It is also time for our Health Minister to show leadership, stand up for NHS staff and put fairness, biological reality and freedom of expression ahead of ideology. Power should not be abused at any level to promote woke ideas to the detriment of our health service.

Mr Gaston: Last week in England, an employment tribunal ruled that the dignity and rights of seven female nurses were violated because a hospital policy allowed a male identifying as female to use women's changing facilities. The judge found that the employer had exposed ordinary working women to a "hostile, humiliating and degrading environment." The judge also found that the employer breached health and safety obligations and engaged in "indirect sex discrimination" by failing to address their "legitimate concerns" about privacy and dignity.

It is correct for Members in the House to highlight that obscenity. However, in this very Building at Stormont, we operate a self-identification policy for toilets and facilities on the basis of gender identity. That includes permitting biological males to use women's toilets based simply on a self-declaration of gender. The policy that we have reads as though it were drafted by the most extreme of trans activists, and, in practice, it was: Stonewall was consulted on the issue, and, going by the resultant document, it effectively wrote the policy.

The local Equality Commission defends its stalling on the issue on the basis that there can be no reduction in rights. In adopting that position, it has trashed the rights of women — rights that are recognised in countries that, unlike Northern Ireland, are full member states of the EU, such as Poland. Women and girls in Northern Ireland have no statutory guarantee of single-sex spaces. Women, whether concerned about privacy, religious conscience and/or fundamental rights, are left without legal protections that are enjoyed elsewhere in our United Kingdom. Those rights are flouted in this Building. That is not compassionate or inclusive. I trust that common sense will prevail in 2026, that that obscenity will be put right and that the policy that we have for toilets in this place will be scrapped. It is time, in this Building, for you to be allowed to use only the toilet that reflects your biological reality.

Mr Brett: Policing in Northern Ireland works best when it serves the entirety of our community. Much of the public and political focus on that issue has been on the under-representation of certain sections of our community. That focus is important, but another issue receives far less attention in our media and is a growing concern for me: the under-representation of working-class Protestants in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. It is not an abstract or academic point. In many working-class areas that once saw policing as a proud and respected tradition, confidence in that institution has begun to fall.

When any section of our community disengages with our police, it is bad for our society as a whole. A police service that reflects not the whole of our community but only parts of it does a disservice to the entirety of Northern Ireland. That principle, which some in the Chamber and in the media speak about, must be applied equally. It means recognising where engagement has fallen and where focus is needed. That is why the current recruitment drive matters. It is more than a campaign; it is an opportunity to reset the message that we want to see working-class Protestant communities apply to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland. If we want a police service that understands our communities, we need a police service that comes from our communities. Representation will strengthen local knowledge and improve communication.

I thank community organisations and partners in north and west Belfast who have engaged with the Police Service to try to ensure that that obstacle is overcome. I pay tribute to our Policing Board members and, in particular, Joanne Bunting, who has raised that important issue for many years. I send a clear message from these Benches in the Chamber: we want members of our community and the working-class Protestant community to apply to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I look forward to other political leaders in the Chamber calling on their community to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Mr Stewart: I take the opportunity to pass on my best wishes and send good luck to Carrick Rangers Football Club and the amber army ahead of the County Antrim Shield final against Cliftonville Football Club at Seaview tonight. It is a very important opportunity for the town. Ahead of tonight's final, as you can imagine, a great sense of pride is flowing through the town and across the United States, where Carrick Rangers's fan base is growing at a rapid rate of knots. It is fantastic to see, and I wish Stephen Baxter and the players the very best of luck for tonight's final. They have shown great tenacity, grit and effort to get this far, and I know that they will do all that they can to give the amber army something to cheer about tonight. It also provides a wonderful opportunity for Peter Clarke, chairman of the club, the board, the officials and all the volunteers who are associated with that wonderful community club to go out and demonstrate the effort that they have put in ahead of tonight's final. It is a wonderful opportunity for them all, and I hope that they have a fantastic time.

I wish the many hundreds of supporters who are heading out this evening to cheer on the amber army — I understand that over 800 Carrick Rangers fans will travel to Seaview — all the very best. I look forward to joining them and hope that we can all return to Carrickfergus tonight, marching with pride as we hold the County Antrim Shield.

Ms Brownlee: An important issue that concerns everyone in the Chamber is the growing tide of online abuse, particularly the personalised and appearance-based attacks directed at women in public life. In recent days and weeks, our MP Carla Lockhart has been subjected to utterly appalling abuse on social media. It is not a criticism of her politics, which is, of course, a legitimate part of debate, but vicious, demeaning comments about her appearance. That behaviour is not political discourse; it is bullying, pure and simple.

Carla's response has been powerful and dignified. By calling out the abuse for what it is, she has stood not only for herself but for each and every one of us who is constantly attacked on social media.

When individuals resort to personal abuse rather than argument, they have already lost the debate, but we should be honest about the damage that the abuse causes. The harm does not stop with the individual but extends to their families, children and loved ones. When we look in the mirror in the morning, we may wish that we looked slightly different, but that gives nobody the right to pass judgement or hurl abuse at another human being.

Much of the abuse comes from trolls hiding behind anonymous profiles, and there is a lack of consequences for them. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have done little to tackle the problem. There is no doubt that stronger account verification, faster removal of abuse content and real sanctions are needed, but what we see from regulators at the moment is simply not good enough. Women and girls are vulnerable users and continue to face harassment, exploitation and intimidation online, with little meaningful protection or recourse. Voluntary compliance has failed. Without legally binding obligations and penalties that actually hurt them, the platforms will continue to prioritise profit over people.

The abuse that has been directed at Carla is horrendous. Nobody in public life or on any side of politics should have to endure it. She is a tireless advocate for her constituents and serves with integrity and strength. Those who resort to such vile personal attacks are not fit to tie her laces. That behaviour must be called out for what it is. It must be challenged, and it must be stopped. We stand with Carla and every person who is the victim of such abuse. It is time for social media companies and regulators alike to move beyond words and take real action.

Ms Kimmins (The Minister for Infrastructure): With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle

in compliance with section 52 of the NI Act 1998, I will make a statement on the North/South Ministerial Council inland waterways meeting that was held at the North/South Ministerial Council joint secretariat headquarters in Armagh on 28 November 2025. The Executive were represented by me, as Minister for Infrastructure, and junior Minister in the Executive Office Joanne Bunting. The Irish Government were represented by James Browne, Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The statement has been agreed with junior Minister Bunting, and I make it on behalf of both of us. I chaired the meeting, and the following is a note of what was discussed.

We welcomed the progress achieved by Waterways Ireland since the previous meeting of the Council in the inland waterways sector, including the ongoing work on phase 3 of the Ulster canal restoration project. We also noted progress on projects including the construction of a new depot in Tullamore and the repurposing of the former site; the development of a five-year maintenance plan for the Barrow navigation; the replacement of Camden sea lock gates; and the upgrade of the public realm at Wilton Terrace along the Grand canal. We welcomed the continuing collaboration with other stakeholders on the delivery of greenways and blueways and the extensive energy retrofits at the Waterways Ireland headquarters in Enniskillen to enhance sustainability and reduce carbon emissions.

We recognised the achievements of Waterways Ireland in reaching the final of the competition for best digital marketing campaign at the All-Ireland Marketing Awards and, for the project 'A Boatman's Journey', at the eGovernment Awards.

We also recognised Waterways Ireland's commitment to the implementation of its people strategy and to staff well-being. We welcomed the actions being taken by Waterways Ireland with regard to addressing the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, including work to transition its operational fleet to hydrotreated vegetable oil; the establishment of a canals working group focused on the management of water in canals; and ongoing work to develop a sustainability road map aligned to the United Nations sustainable development goals.

We noted the draft Waterways Ireland annual report and accounts for 2024, which have been submitted to the Comptrollers and Auditors General in both jurisdictions. We noted that Waterways Ireland's draft 2026 business plan has been submitted to sponsor Departments and is under review.

The draft corporate plan for 2026-28 is currently being prepared. The draft business plan for 2026 and the draft corporate plan for 2026-28 will be presented to the Council for approval at the earliest opportunity.

We consented to the granting of a number of Waterways Ireland property disposals, and we received a presentation on the Shannon tourism master plan for 2020-2030. We noted the partnership among Waterways Ireland, Fáilte Ireland and 10 local authorities in developing the master plan; the collaboration with other stakeholders, authorities and agencies in the region to deliver the master plan; its success in its first five years; and other initiatives that have developed since its implementation commenced. We noted the progress made on the construction of the Narrow Water bridge between Cornamucklagh in County Louth and Warrenpoint in County Down and agreed to hold the next inland waterways sectoral meeting in spring 2026.

My officials and I look forward to our continued work with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and his officials in all areas of cooperation in the Waterways Ireland sector.

Mr McNulty: I thank the Minister for her statement. I am disappointed, however, that there is no mention in it of the Newry canal. The Newry canal has the potential to become a new blue-green artery through our countryside, connecting to Carlingford lough and, potentially, ultimately the Shannon estuary. Where are we with that, please, Minister?

Ms Kimmins: As the Member is aware, the Newry canal is not within Waterways Ireland's remit, which is why it was not discussed.

Mr Boylan: Cuirim fáilte roimh ráiteas an Aire.

The restoration of the Ulster canal presents great opportunities to reconnect Ireland's inland waterways system, as well as to boost tourism and the local economy. What is the current position with the Ulster canal restoration project?

Ms Kimmins: The Ulster canal project is being progressed in three phases. Phase 1 is from Lough Erne to Castle Saunderson, and phase 2 is from Clones to Clonfad. Both are now complete and open for navigation. I had the pleasure of visiting Clones last year. It is a fantastic project.

Work on the third and final phase from Castle Saunderson to Clonfad is in progress. Pre-construction work, including the acquisition of land and the renewal of planning permission, is under way. Phase 3 is subdivided into four sub-phases, and the current estimated completion date for all sub-phases is 2028-29. I am fully committed to supporting the completion of that ambitious project, which will be transformational for communities and businesses in the region. All funding for the project to date has been provided by the Irish Government, including funding through the Shared Island Fund, with further commitments in place.

Mr Dunne: I thank the Minister for bringing the statement to the House. It references the success of Waterways Ireland's marketing campaign and the positivity around that. Will the Minister outline any learning or cooperation that could be applied to her Department in improving messaging on important issues such as road safety? Maybe the Department can also look at the principle of doing more with less.

Ms Kimmins: A broad response to that is that we are always looking at what we can do and how we can maximise the budget that we have in order to have the greatest impact. The Member will be aware that, this year, we have increased the budget for road safety advertising and campaigns. We have made really good use of that money, but there is always more that we can do. I continually review what we can do in order to have the best impact.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Members, I remind you that I will allow questions on Waterways Ireland and on the ministerial statement. It will be up to the Minister to decide whether to answer questions on anything else.

Mr McMurray: I thank the Minister for her statement. What work has she done on developing blueways in Northern Ireland, and how will that work have an effect on tourism and the marketing of Northern Ireland as a destination?

Ms Kimmins: There has been some significant work. A lot of it has been done in conjunction with Waterways Ireland, and I have given examples. There are so many more opportunities that we need to explore, however. Funding will be an issue, and that is why Shared Island funding, for example, is so important, as it enables us to progress some really important schemes. There are lots of opportunities, and we can look at blueways outside of the collaborative, all-island work that we are doing to see what more we can do across the North, be that in conjunction with councils or other bodies. It is something that I am open to doing, and I would like to see what else we can do.

Mr Stewart: I thank the Minister for her statement. What specific targets has Waterways Ireland set for carbon reduction, biodiversity protection and sustainability, and how will progress on those be measured and reported on?

Ms Kimmins: Waterways Ireland has an increased focus on the sustainable management of the natural environment on waterways. Given its remit, it is intrinsically connected to the protection of biodiversity and ecology. Its 10-year plan has climate action sustainable development as one of its strategic priorities, and all its activities align with United Nations sustainable development goals.

An ambitious training programme on climate action and sustainability has been delivered to upskill the senior management team and provide a dedicated curriculum for all staff. In 2022, Waterways Ireland adopted its 10-year climate action plan, and it continues to deliver on that. It has developed a heritage and biodiversity plan that forms the foundation for the sustainable management of the body's assets for this and future generations. On a more practical level, Waterways Ireland is leading by example. I mentioned the hydrotreated vegetable oil. It has migrated its fleet in the northern region to using hydrotreated vegetable oil fuel, and we had an excellent presentation on that. As I mentioned, Waterways Ireland is retrofitting is headquarters in Enniskillen and its other buildings to reduce its carbon footprint.

Ms Finnegan: The Minister's statement is welcome. Minister, the work of Waterways Ireland recognises that our waterways do not stop at the border, and neither do climate change or biodiversity. What steps is Waterways Ireland taking to address climate change and loss of biodiversity?

Ms Kimmins: That ties in with a lot of what I have outlined with regard to Waterways Ireland's 10-year plan on climate action and sustainable development. It is clear to me that it is taking those issues extremely seriously. That is an important part of the work that it is doing, given its link with biodiversity and ecology. It has undertaken significant work to address those issues to ensure that it plays its part from a climate change perspective.

Mr Harvey: I thank the Minister for her statement to the House. My question is on a similar theme. Minister, you referred to work by Waterways Ireland to transition its operations fleet to hydrotreated vegetable oil. Has there been an assessment of the long-term sustainability and cost of that practice, given the pace of change in new sustainable fuels technology?

Ms Kimmins: As part of the work to develop, that has to have been factored in at all stages. From what we heard on the day, it is a worthwhile and important initiative. We have seen that in other organisations, and even those in the private sector have started to use similar fuel and methods. We can all play our part in reducing our carbon footprint and its impact on climate change, so it is worthwhile. If the Member would like more information on that, we can certainly get specific details.

Mr McAleer: In June, along with fellow members of the AERA Committee, I visited County Fermanagh and Waterways Ireland and saw the great conservation work that it is doing.

Minister, how will the Department assist Waterways Ireland to deliver phase 3 of the restoration project?

Ms Kimmins: To deliver phase 3 of the Ulster canal restoration project, Waterways Ireland will need to acquire lands in County Fermanagh. It does not have the powers necessary to make vesting orders. However, my Department has the powers to make the orders on its behalf. Officials in my Department are working with Waterways Ireland to make any vesting orders necessary to acquire the lands needed in the North for phase 3 of the restoration project.

Mr Gaston: Is the Minister satisfied that Waterways Ireland's people strategy and commitment to staff well-being, referenced in her statement, are compatible with a staffing profile in Northern Ireland in which 61 out of 98 staff are Roman Catholic and only 31 are Protestant?

Ms Kimmins: I am not too sure what that has to do with what we are talking about here today. There are policies in place across all organisations around balance in staffing numbers etc. It is about the quality of staff. We have brilliant staff right across the island. There are equal opportunities for anyone who wishes to join an organisation such as Waterways Ireland.

Mr Carroll: Minister, it has been well documented that data centres are resource-intensive. They suck water and are a real drain on energy across the North and South of Ireland. Was there any discussion at the North/South meeting about limiting the roll-out of data centres or their impact on the environment, including water?

Ms Kimmins: That did not come up specifically. However, it potentially will in the future, given the issues that you have outlined. I know that, in other organisations, people are looking at how you can use that better and transfer the energy into something that benefits the local area. To date, it has not come up with me at the meetings, but I am happy to see what we can do on it in future.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you very much indeed. Gerry. [Interruption.]

Oh, sorry. [Inaudible.]

I thought that you were all looking at my wonderful polar bear tie, but there you go.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Before I call the Minister, I remind Members that they must be concise in asking their questions. This is not an opportunity for debate, and long introductions will not be allowed. I also remind Members that they have to be in the Chamber for the whole statement in order to be called to ask a question of the Minister. That is just a reminder of the rules and regulations.

Mr Muir (The Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I commend you on your tie.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you.

Mr Muir: Yes, I did notice.

I thank the House for the opportunity to make this statement to the Assembly on the launch of the consultation on the Northern Ireland draft nature recovery strategy. The statement will explain why a nature recovery strategy for Northern Ireland is a timely and vital intervention that is needed to reverse the decline in nature. I will also outline to Members the arrangements for the launch of the consultation on the draft strategy and the proposed timeline for proceeding to publication of the finalised strategy.

Nature is for all of us, but we can no longer take it for granted. Interventions are required if we are to ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and benefit from time spent in nature. Lough Neagh, regrettably, remains a stark example of the consequences of ignoring the needs of nature, with all its human and environmental costs. Other warning signs are also present across Northern Ireland, with habitats not being protected as they should be and native species being threatened by climate change, pollution, invasive species and land-use change.

The nature recovery strategy must be the start of a new chapter where we cherish nature, recognising that nature is the foundation upon which society is built. The strategy should serve as a call to action and must ignite a shared commitment to protect and recover our precious natural environment. The strategy is one of my 10 key pledges for the mandate, as published in the Department’s corporate plan, and I am determined to see it not just in place but implemented, putting nature firmly on the road to recovery. I am pleased to inform the House, therefore, that a new nature recovery strategy has been drafted and is being launched for consultation later today. I thank the range of stakeholders who helped shape the draft strategy to get us to this milestone. I look forward to engaging with stakeholders during the consultation window and receiving feedback, which I am sure will be hugely valuable and help inform the final text.

The nature recovery strategy meets the statutory requirement under the Wildlife and Natural Environment Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 for my Department to develop and regularly review a biodiversity strategy to further the conservation of biodiversity in Northern Ireland. Its name reflects my belief that we need to do more than just conserve biodiversity; we must also help nature to recover and regenerate, and the strategic objectives and actions that are set out aim to achieve just that.

Sadly, nature is in decline not just across Northern Ireland but throughout the world, and urgent action is needed to address the biodiversity crisis. We are witnessing further loss of habitats and species and the ecosystem services that they provide. Those include providing us with our most basic needs such as food, clean air and water, and shelter. Nature also plays an important role in helping to regulate our climate and offers us opportunities for recreation that enhance our health and well-being. We only have to look back to storm Éowyn this time last year as an example of the impact of more extreme weather on our communities and environment to realise that nature is our ally in taking climate action.

For its size, Northern Ireland is one of the most geologically diverse areas of the planet. That has resulted in a rich and internationally important biodiversity of some 20,000 species across our land, soils, air and waters. Northern Ireland is home to species that are found nowhere else in the UK. They include pollan — a fish found in Lough Neagh and Lower Lough Erne — and subspecies such as the Irish hare. I am very excited to watch BBC's 'Winterwatch', which airs tonight from Mount Stewart, putting a positive spotlight on Northern Ireland.

A significant component of our biodiversity lies within the marine environment, including our sea loughs and estuaries. However, in Northern Ireland, around 40% of the flora and fauna in our most protected sites falls short of the defined standard for "favourable condition", while only one of 49 priority habitat types in Northern Ireland is considered to be at "favourable conservation status".

Protecting and restoring nature is not just a nice thing to do. We have a moral and legal obligation to do it. There are huge social and economic benefits to returning to a world that is rich in nature.

In December 2022, Northern Ireland, alongside the rest of the UK, joined the global community in committing to the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, which was agreed at the Conference of the Parties 15 (COP15) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The global biodiversity framework sets out, in 23 targets and four goals, the urgent actions required to "bend the curve" of biodiversity loss by 2030 and move towards the 2050 vision where biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits that are essential for all people. The framework sets an ambitious target to move us towards the 2050 vision, which is known as the 30 by 30 target. That essentially commits us to having 30% of our terrestrial and inland water, and marine and coastal areas, effectively conserved and managed for nature and biodiversity by 2030.

An existing biodiversity duty, which applies to all Departments and public bodies, states:

That is supported by the legislative requirement to set biodiversity targets in the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. In reality, around 9·9% of Northern Ireland's terrestrial land area and approximately 38% of our terrestrial waters are designated as protected sites, although some of those may not be in a good enough ecological condition to contribute to the 30 by 30 target immediately.

The objectives and actions in the draft nature recovery strategy aim to fulfil our global commitments, legislative obligations and climate goals by providing bigger, better-managed and more connected nature. The draft nature recovery strategy demonstrates my commitment to fulfilling the actions in the global biodiversity framework. It also highlights the actions that we are taking already at a local level and proposes new actions for Northern Ireland, which add to the existing framework of targets in relevant policies and strategies that are already in place and aim to deliver for biodiversity.

I want the nature recovery strategy to be about hope: hope that nature can thrive if we start recognising its value and taking necessary action; hope that, by our stopping the harm and being more responsible, nature can recover; and hope that we can all live side by side with nature and enjoy its riches and benefits. By putting in place plans and actions to restore and better manage areas for nature and adopt more nature-positive policies using the best available science and evidence, we can ensure that it is protected for future generations. Indeed, the much good that is already being done and the many great projects that are taking place across Northern Ireland are demonstrating nature recovery in action.

As Minister, I have had the privilege of seeing that work at first hand. The LIFE Raft project on Rathlin, for example, is truly inspiring and will be transformative for the seabird population on the island. It shows what can be achieved through cooperation with local communities, environmental organisations such as the RSPB and my Department. At Mourne Park, the Woodland Trust is restoring and conserving our ancient woodland as part of wider efforts to preserve one of our most stunning landscapes. Again, that illustrates what can be achieved by collaborative working.

Peatland is one of our most precious habitats, and it is an essential carbon sink. It is supported by our new peatland strategy. With funding from my Department, the peatland collaborative network is undertaking essential management and rewetting projects at the Belfast hills. Furthermore, species such as curlew are being brought back from the brink in places such as the Antrim hills. That is a result of the good work that is being done by many, especially the RSPB. We cannot let our guard down, however. We must do much more to build on those successes. We know what the solutions are: there are inspiring examples of conservation successes. We need collective will to take the tough decisions that are necessary if we are to deliver recovery at scale. Those examples show what can be achieved when we work together for the benefit of nature and people, working to simultaneously tackle the joint crises in biodiversity and climate, and reaping the benefits for public health and well-being.

Every one of us has a duty to give due regard to nature. Whether in the public or private sector or as individuals, every citizen has a part to play. I encourage everyone to read the draft nature recovery strategy when it is launched later today and to share their views on it and their ideas for putting nature on the road to recovery. The consultation documents will be available on the DAERA website, which will also contain information on how to respond. The consultation will be open for eight weeks, and there will be an opportunity for stakeholders to engage with my officials during that time. I have provided the Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee with a written briefing on the launch of the strategy. After the consultation closes, all responses will be considered and the strategy will be finalised and prepared for publication.

I reiterate my thanks to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for affording me the opportunity to make this statement. I appeal to everyone to engage with the consultation, so that we can all play our part in restoring nature and can, collectively, appreciate its beauty for generations to come.

Mr McCrossan: Minister, you are known in the House as a man who loves a good consultation, but where is the machinery for delivery? Will you confirm what new funding will be allocated to the strategy, what statutory duties will be enforced and what the consequences will be for public bodies that continue to damage biodiversity, including those that are linked to the pollution and land-use decisions that have already left places such as Lough Neagh in crisis?

Mr Muir: Thank you, Daniel, for your questions. If I did not carry out consultations, I would, rightly, be criticised. That is an important statutory duty that gives people the opportunity to have their say, and that is what I am giving people over the next eight weeks.

I am conscious that lots of actions need to be taken to restore nature. I see not just the situation with Lough Neagh but that with our uplands, and I am taking action. For example, there are four pillars relating to water quality, which could be transposed to that issue: education, incentivisation, regulation and enforcement. I will not be found wanting when it comes to regulation and enforcement, and it is important that we have education and incentivisation.

We have received the draft Budget from the Finance Minister. We are going through that as a Department to see what we can do with it. These are challenging financial circumstances, but I am a person who has hope, and I am conscious that funding is available through, for example, PEACE PLUS and the Shared Island Fund. I am grateful to the Irish Government for the support that they have given to us on nature and particularly for peatland restoration. It is important that we work on an all-Ireland basis. There is lots to do, and I am committed to doing it.

Mr Butler (The Chairperson of the Committee for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): I am sure that the Minister agrees that interdepartmental working is crucial to the success or failure of the strategy. We previously had a statement from the Infrastructure Minister on inland waterways. It is undeniable that inland waterways will play a significant role in achieving the 30 by 30 target, because they uphold some of our most important biodiversity. What interdepartmental ambition do you envisage in delivering on targets such as those for the Lagan canal in my constituency as well as delivering on the prosperity of biodiversity and our communities?

Mr Muir: Thank you, Robbie. It is an important issue. There are already statutory duties on nature, and the public bodies that have responsibility for those areas need to uphold those duties. It is important that I say that.

I am aware of the issues that you set out. It is important that we all work together. We see the benefits of nature, particularly for tourism. If we visit such areas, we can see that they are very busy, particularly at weekends. People appreciate nature. If there are particular issues on which you would like me to follow up with the Infrastructure Minister, I will be happy to do that. We all have a role to play in restoring nature so that it is there for future generations to enjoy.

Ms Finnegan: I thank the Minister for his statement. Minister, biodiversity loss is already significant. What actions from the draft strategy would be prioritised in the first year to ensure early delivery?

Mr Muir: A number of actions are under way already. Those are set out in the environmental improvement plan (EIP). Additional actions are reflected in the nature recovery strategy.

One of the important measures in supporting our farming community is Farming with Nature. We started the roll-out of that last year with the transition scheme, and there are further actions to be taken this year. We are doing that through a co-design process. It is important that we do that. A lot of work needs to be done to support our farming community with the challenges regarding nature so that we can build that resilience. We are focused on doing that alongside delivering on our peatland strategy, which we launched last September.

There is lots to do on those issues. They are key issues for the general public; people raise them with me regularly. I am also committed to continuing to engage with my Irish Government colleagues, because biodiversity issues are transboundary and it is important that we cooperate on them.

Mr T Buchanan: Minister, we are all passionate about the preservation of our nature and wildlife. How does your strategy sit alongside large infrastructure projects and, for example, wind farms, which are mainly developed in boglands and peatlands, where there is heather and which are rich in biodiversity, birdlife and all of that?

Mr Muir: The strategy sits comfortably alongside those things. The Infrastructure Minister recently published a strategic planning policy statement on renewable energy, and that interrelates with those issues. Each application to do with renewable energy is considered on its merits, and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) will give its response. However, there are real benefits to us as a society from investing in renewables, such as lower bills and energy security. I view those things through a wider prism, and there are real benefits associated with us all working together to restore nature while delivering energy security.

Mr Blair: I thank the Minister for his statement and for the actions that he is driving in his Department to help to deliver on nature recovery. Will the Minister provide an update on actions to tackle ammonia pollution, given that it directly relates to nature recovery?

Mr Muir: Thank you, John. The issue of ammonia is of serious importance, and anyone who is in any doubt about that should read the Office for Environmental Protection report published in 2024. It sets that out, along with the history of how the Department approached the matter.

I am aware that ammonia emissions in Northern Ireland remain stubbornly high, and I am determined to find a pathway to reduce them as well as supporting sustainable development in the agriculture sector. Following engagement with farming and environment sector representatives late last year, I believe that we can work together to develop a Northern Ireland-wide ammonia support programme to unlock the issue. My officials have been working at pace with stakeholders to develop that pathway, which reduces emissions — we must do that — and addresses practical issues, such as replacement sheds. I will continue to engage with the Finance Minister on the draft Budget, because that is important, if I am to find a way forward, for funding the sustainable farming investment scheme, so that we can support farmers to take the appropriate actions.

Let there be no doubt that the levels of ammonia pollution in Northern Ireland are of serious concern to me. We can find a way forward that reduces ammonia emissions and deals with the practical issues that have been reported to me by the agriculture community. I am keen to progress that in the months ahead.

Mr McAleer: I thank the Minister for his statement. Minister, my question is almost a follow-on from the previous one. Land use will be critical to the realisation of the strategy, and 75% of the land in the North is farmed. What engagement have you had with the farming sector, and what further plans do you have to engage with that sector to make sure that it is on board with the realisation of the strategy?

Mr Muir: Thank you, Declan. There are two ways. One is the roll-out of the co-design process for the Farming with Nature scheme. It is important that we do that. The other one is the wider issue around land use. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission did a lot of work on a land use framework, and we hope to publish that in the time ahead. I thank everyone who engaged with the commission on that. It will come back with a report, which will provide a template for moving forward. I want to do that in conjunction and partnership with people, so that we find better ways to manage our land and, most important, build that resilience. I am conscious that we need to build resilience in nature so that we can deliver a successful future for farming, and I am committed to doing that.

Mr Wilson: Minister, your report rightly says that we must help nature to recover and regenerate. It also mentions storm Éowyn. In my constituency of Newry and Armagh, Gosford is a fantastic site that is cherished locally and has great collaboration with Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council (ABC), where I formally served as a public representative. Will you commit to putting more resources into Gosford and perhaps meet me and council officials about the ongoing regeneration of the site for the benefit of nature and biodiversity? A lot more could be done in Gosford with financial interventions from your Department that could lead to a greater and better use of the site and a better experience for the people of Newry and Armagh and those from further afield. People come from all arts and parts to Gosford. If possible, I would like —.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Gareth, we are giving you a wee bit of leniency, but it will not last for long. You get one question.

Mr Wilson: Will you commit to giving more resources and helping with the potential regeneration of that site?

Mr Muir: Ten out of 10. That is probably the longest question I have ever got. Even Matthew has never got away with that. [Laughter.]

Most of us in the Chamber will know of places in our constituency that were affected by the storm. Tonight on BBC 2, ‘Winterwatch’ will profile its impact on Mount Stewart. We have to learn lessons from that about climate adaptation, and I have a plan for that with the Executive. We also have to learn lessons for our replanting. I am happy to engage with you about Gosford Forest Park; initially, that may be with officials. I know Gosford. I have been down there, and it is a great place to be. I did a 10k run down there. I value the forest and can see why the local community was affected by the storm damage. Alongside that, we need to do more on the tree planting action plan, and that work is under way. We need to set out a way to plant more trees and build resilience.

Ms K Armstrong: Thank you, Minister, for your statement and for mentioning ‘Winterwatch’ at Mount Stewart. I was delighted when you joined me at Mount Stewart and we saw the damage that Storm Éowyn had caused, with 10,000 trees having fallen. What is your view on setting targets in law for nature recovery?

Mr Muir: Thank you, Kellie. It was great to be with you at Mount Stewart, and it is good that it is being profiled to a national audience tonight. Good work is being undertaken at Mount Stewart. The storm provided challenges but also opportunities for the nature restoration there. More practically, the risks to Mount Stewart caused by the impact of climate change were profiled this morning on Radio Ulster.

There is merit in setting targets in law. I am conscious that the European Union has progressed actions for nature restoration. The draft strategy sets out that we will consult on targets and then bring proposals to the Executive. I am conscious that Mark H Durkan is progressing a potential private Member's Bill in that area. I have told him that there is merit in that. If there are ways in which we can strengthen our protections for nature, I am prepared to consider them.

Ms D Armstrong: I thank the Minister for his statement this morning. Minister, you referenced the global biodiversity framework and the aim of having 30% of terrestrial inland water, in effect, conserved. Will you give us a commitment today that that will not include a compulsory land purchase for landowners?

Mr Muir: Yes. That is an international commitment. It is stretching, but it is important that I set it out in the context of the strategy, because that is what guides our actions. We are not looking for compulsory purchase; it is about bringing people with us. For example, one of the key things about Farming with Nature is that it needs to happen in a way that is attractive to farmers, because they are running an enterprise — they are family farms — and we want to make sure that it is viable for them to do so. Our focus will be on that in the time ahead.

Mr McMurray: Thank you, Minister. As someone who likes to wander through woods and glades, I ask you to give an update on tree planting.

Mr Muir: I join you, Andy, in an appreciation of getting out and about. As citizens, we value nature. We need to do more tree planting, and that is why we commissioned the Strategic Investment Board to take forward a tree planting action plan. The target delivery for the plan is around March or April of this year.

I am conscious that Northern Ireland has low levels of afforestation. We therefore need to turn the curve. That is why we are developing a tree planting action plan. We are doing that in conjunction with stakeholders, and I thank them for their engagement with my Department.

Mr McNulty: When the warmth of summer arrives in late April into May, I enjoy nothing more than walking in the foothills of our mythical mountain Slieve Gullion and hearing the call of the cuckoo. Last year was the first year in many years that I did not hear the cuckoo. I firmly support the concept of turning the curve on biodiversity loss by 2030 and welcome any strategy with that ambition, but it must be about delivery. Two groups in Armagh, the Callan River Wildlife Group and Friends of the Folly —.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Justin, I am enjoying the lyricism about cuckoos, but may we have a question, please?

Mr McNulty: Two groups in Armagh, the Callan River Wildlife Group and Friends of the Folly River, have done enormous work on biodiversity protection for fish, otters, woodpeckers and kingfishers. What supports are there for groups that are doing the hard grind on the ground to protect endangered species?

Mr Buckley: Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

Mr Muir: I am very aware of Slieve Gullion. It is somewhere that I visit not just in the winter but in the summer, and it is a very valued part of Northern Ireland. Support is available through the environment fund for organisations that do great work. Let me be clear that the delivery of the strategy will involve a lot of working with environmental and non-governmental organisations on the ground that deliver such work. I set that out in my statement, but, in it, I provided just a summary of the fantastic work that is occurring across Northern Ireland. We are very keen to work with those groups and to support them.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): I call Jonathan Buckley. No cuckoo noises from you, sunshine.

Mr Buckley: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. There are many ways in which we can increase biodiversity and wildlife in Northern Ireland, but I do not believe that the Minister is considering some of the measures that would not affect agricultural land use, such as managing wildfires by controlled burning, managing predators in conjunction with the farming and rural community, given that we have seen the population of some indigenous species, such as snipe, lapwing and red grouse, decimated and managing the badger population, which has spread TB and had an impact on other species. Will the Minister therefore talk to rural communities and farmers about potential solutions, or is it just a case of talk and no action?

Mr Muir: I engage on those issues and am happy to continue to do so. The Member raised a couple of issues. I will take the last one, which concerns TB. I understand its importance. We will undertake a consultation on wildlife interventions in the spring, and it is important that people respond to it. It is one of the three pillars, along with people and cattle, in our blueprint for the eradication of bovine TB, so I understand the issue's importance.

There is an action in the wildfires strategic framework to undertake a review of, and a consultation on, prescribed burning. We need to do that. Farmers have a massive role to play in the management of areas and, hopefully, in the prevention of wildfires. Regulation is one side of that, while the other is education. I am happy to continue to engage with stakeholders so that we can find a better way forward, because, although it may be winter now, my mind is already focused on the potential for wildfires occurring again. That is why the nature recovery strategy also has a role to play in how we better manage protected areas. The best way in which to do that is through cooperation and consultation with landowners.

Mr Gaston: Page 34 of the strategy, under "Pollution", states that 30% of water pollution incidents are traced to a farm source. It goes on to state that Northern Ireland Water is responsible for 10% of them. It is reported that more than seven million tons of untreated raw sewage enter our waterways each year, yet that is the only time that Northern Ireland Water is mentioned in your strategy. Where in your strategy or its supporting documents can I read about the specific actions, targets and timescales that you are setting Northern Ireland Water to limit the amount that it is discharging into our waterways, or is this another opportunity for you to give Northern Ireland Water a bye ball and kick the farmer?

Mr Muir: The strategy sets out what is referred to as largely point-source pollution. We also know that there are concerns in relation to diffuse pollution. There is a lot we need to do in order to improve water quality. I have been very clear about the actions that I will be seeking to take on the specific issue of sewage pollution. I will bring a paper to my Executive colleagues on what you have described as "a bye ball", which would otherwise be referred to as the statutory overflows regime for pollution incidents (SORPI). I have already presented other actions to the Executive, such as designating Belfast lough as a sensitive area. That will require additional actions as a result of sewage pollution. I am doing what I can about all that, but I need the support of my Executive colleagues. I look forward to receiving that in the time ahead.

Miss McIlveen: While I am mindful of the Minister's responses in relation to ammonia levels, is the strategy just a further attempt to reduce livestock numbers in Northern Ireland?

Mr Muir: No.

Miss Dolan: I apologise for missing the start of the statement. How does the draft nature recovery strategy address the specific challenges that are faced by rural and border communities, particularly in relation to land-use pressures and access to environmental supports?

Mr Muir: The previous statement moved faster than expected, so do not feel bad. I rushed down here as well. The way in which we support rural communities is an integral part of the strategy, particularly in the ecosystem services that nature provides, which is why we want to consult on that and get views back. We are keen to hear about any other views on what we are going to do. Opportunities clearly exist, particularly in relation to good, green jobs and around people and restoration, and I want to be able to deliver that for our rural communities.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): That concludes questions on the statement. I invite Members to take their ease while we hand over at the top Table.

Mr Donnelly: I beg to move

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour and 30 minutes for this debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes to propose and 10 minutes to make a winding-up speech. An amendment has been selected and is published on the Marshalled List, so the Business Committee has agreed that 15 minutes will be added to the total time for the debate.

Mr Donnelly: We tabled the motion on behalf of the patients who are waiting hours for an ambulance; those who are waiting outside a full A&E in the back of an ambulance, unable to get in; and for the patients who are in overcrowded emergency departments on trolleys, chairs and, appallingly, as we have seen, even on the floor. The motion is for the patients who are in corridor beds and wards and who are pushed into any available space, and for the staff — my colleagues — who have dealt with those pressures for long periods and who I have seen impacted on from working under those conditions.

It has been a long road of continued warnings and repeated failures that have resulted in yet another year of crisis-point pressures on staff and patients in our healthcare system. When the Minister and departmental officials were called to an urgent meeting of the Health Committee in January last year, amid a spike in winter pressures, I took the opportunity to raise the winter preparedness plan. I was told by officials that planning for 2024 began in March, yet the plan was not published until November. At the time, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) described it as "too little, too late". That was a stark warning from front-line clinicians on the dangers of winter planning delay. The explanation offered for the delay was that the document had to pass through multiple layers of review with numerous stakeholders. We were then told by the Minister that the 2025 winter plan would be even more expansive, involving even more stakeholders and a blank-page approach that would begin in late February or early March at the latest. However, that is exactly when planning began the year before, and we already knew where that approach led. Publication was in November, when services were already under strain. Why repeat a process that demonstrably failed, particularly when starting from a blank page and promising even more consultation?

I want to be very clear. I support co-design. I advocate for the involvement of healthcare professionals and experts at every level of health policy, but doing so in a way that slows delivery to the point of ineffectiveness is not meaningful co-design. To me, as a healthcare worker and as a politician engaging with stakeholders, it seems that those blank pages and big discussions were more of a big distraction from accountability. It is something that looks comprehensive on paper and something to say when asked that fails to translate into improved outcomes or reduced winter pressures.

At the urgent Health Committee meeting in January last year, the Minister acknowledged that they would not crack winter pressures outright, but he said that they had to deliver:

recognising the significant level of burnout across the health service. Yet, by October, the tone had shifted. At Question Time in the Chamber, the Minister said that he was not sure that he agreed that delays had any impact on staff morale and claimed that we were way ahead of the previous year. With respect, a rushed plan, published only three weeks earlier than the year before, is not way ahead. It is marginally less late. Ten days after that statement, a Health Committee briefing that was, bizarrely, mainly pictures acknowledged that moral injury to staff was one of the red lines that had already been crossed. Then, on 17 December, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine published its report, stating that morale was at "an all-time low". Its report contained deeply troubling testimony from clinicians, describing the harsh reality inside Northern Ireland's emergency departments. It was very clear that corridor care is undignified, causes harm and must be eradicated.

Somewhere between acknowledging burnout and dismissing the impact of delay, the Minister's position changed. Unfortunately, the lived experience of the staff did not. Just before Christmas, the Chair of the Health Committee, Philip McGuigan, and I carried out a visit to an emergency department, unannounced, to understand the reality on the ground directly from the patients and the staff. I place on record my sincere thanks to the healthcare workers who took time in the middle of their exceptionally busy shifts to speak with us so openly and honestly. What we saw made one thing very clear: the winter preparedness plan had not delivered a significant reduction in pressure. It was a Sunday at around 9.00 pm, and during our visit there, up to nine ambulances were queued outside the department. At that point, the longest wait in the back of an ambulance was six hours and 21 minutes, and we were told that it had been seven hours the night before. Inside the department, there were 114 patients. Thirty of those patients had infectious conditions requiring side rooms, and 52 patients were waiting on trolleys. The longest wait for a bed in a ward in the department was four days and 16 hours. There were between 14 and 16 corridor beds in use, and there was no spare cardiac capacity. Only one respiratory bed was available for any patients who might require specialist non-invasive ventilation. Staff told us that flu was placing significant additional pressure this winter, with several patients requiring admission but no beds available. Wards were running with three extra patients each without additional staff. We were told that flow had stopped. When it becomes that blocked up, it becomes very dangerous for patients if emergency care is needed.

While winter pressures are not new, ambulance delays and corridor care are no longer seasonal issues but are now year-round features of our system. On the night that we visited, around 100 patients in the hospital were medically fit for discharge but were waiting for care in the community. The figures speak for themselves. Patients are waiting far too long in inappropriate settings, and it is clear that harm will occur as a result of those delays. In 2022, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, using the standard mortality ratio, worked out that there were approximately 1,400 deaths associated with long waits in EDs in Northern Ireland. In Scotland, in 2024, there were around 800 deaths. We have almost double the number of excess deaths here in Northern Ireland, where the population is three times smaller.

The Minister wanted measurable differences, yet, when I have asked repeatedly about the standard mortality ratio, the response has been to say:

You cannot credibly claim that progress is measurable if you are not measuring the harm that you are trying to prevent.

When the plan was published, I submitted a question for urgent oral answer, specifically to ask how the plan would reduce winter pressures. The Minister talked about vaccination uptake programmes, yet vaccination uptake by staff was not above 40% in any trust in Northern Ireland this winter. He discussed improving mental health and learning disability bed pressures to reduce demand on EDs by ensuring that the right care is available in the right place, yet the mental health strategy has been 80% shelved, with only 16% funded overall. We know that the PSNI is taking more than 100 concern-for-safety calls every day, almost none of which involves crime but people who need mental health care. He talked about supporting social care delivery in the community and improving the system flow in hospitals, yet independent domiciliary care workers, one of the most essential parts of our social care system, did not receive the promised pay uplift to the real living wage.

Last week, the RCN released a report on the crisis in corridor beds. As previously highlighted, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine released an alarming report with testimonies from clinicians exposing the harrowing reality inside Northern Ireland's EDs.

The Minister has spoken about avoiding ED attendance and admission for end-of-life care for people who have a preference to be at home; yet we recently had an inquiry into palliative care in Northern Ireland that concluded that palliative care is fragmented and under-resourced. I hope that the Minister will implement the recommendations in the report to improve that vital service.

The winter preparedness plan was a rushed and uncoordinated paper, containing little that was genuinely new, and it was even released on social media before it was provided to members of the Health Committee. These may have been things that the Minister wanted to fix, but patients and staff are still suffering harm from severe consequences of winter pressures and a lack of planning and transformation. I call on the Minister to deliver detailed plans for winter 2026-27 no later than the summer of 2026.

Warm words and good intentions are not enough. The impact of the Minister's winter preparedness plan was not significant, measurable or noticeable, and the staff are now more burned out than ever. This year's plan has failed.

Mr Carroll: I beg to move the following amendment:

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): You have 10 minutes to propose and five minutes to make a winding-up speech on the amendment. All other Members who are called to speak in the debate will have five minutes. Please open the debate on the amendment.

Mr Carroll: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Winter comes every year and is not a surprise. It should not catch the Minister or the Executive off guard. However, each and every year, including this winter, the Executive act as though the annual winter healthcare crisis is unprecedented.

There is nothing that I disagree with in the Member's motion. I thank him for moving it and for his opening comments. However, my amendment adds to the motion. I will expand upon that.

The motion correctly deplores the disgraceful pressures being faced by patients and staff in emergency departments. Those pressures are entirely foreseeable. Plans that are published in mid-October or November are, as has been said, too little and too late. This year, we are in the same position. The corridor care, as it is euphemistically called, is a visual manifestation of the disastrous state of our health service. People in medical crisis are being treated in corridors and in staff changing rooms and being denied the dignity and respect that they deserve. Unfortunately, that has become completely normalised.

Last winter, one patient waited for 19 hours in an ambulance before hospital admission. People are routinely spending up to a day in A&E waiting rooms before seeing a doctor. That is completely unacceptable.

Last January, over 45% of patients were waiting for more than four hours in A&E, which is the worst performance across these islands. People here in the North are now four times more likely to wait for planned care than in England. We have 127,000 people waiting for over a year for a first outpatient appointment. That is completely unacceptable.

The figure that was mentioned is worth repeating: 1,400 excess deaths occurred here that were linked to long A&E waits, and that is double the rate in Scotland, as has been said, despite our smaller population. The system is killing people. That is the blunt reality.

At the root of the crisis is the systematic degradation of our healthcare workforce. The costs of hospital care have risen by 28% compared with just 8% in England. None of that reaches the workers' pockets. Healthcare staff have had to fight to get an insulting 3·6% pay offer from October — not backdated to April, as has been the case in England — and have been told to just accept it. Is it any wonder that staff morale is at rock bottom and people are leaving the sector and, in many cases, the country? We have 35% more registered nurses per capita than England, but we have longer waits and worse outcomes because the system is haemorrhaging experienced staff.

The Executive's solution is privatisation in the form of handing contracts to private — not independent: private — providers. In the past decade, the Executive has paid £125 million of public money to one such hospital alone. That is outlandish. Waiting list initiatives funnel public money into private healthcare companies' coffers, once again throwing good money after bad. That is a dead-end strategy. You cannot solve a crisis in public healthcare by enriching private profiteers. Every pound spent on private sector contracts is a pound that could employ nurses, retain experienced doctors or reduce the crushing workload that is driving staff away.

The solution is staring us in the face: stop privatisation. Stop spending public money on private healthcare companies for waiting list initiatives and, instead, invest directly in our health service and its workforce. Pay healthcare workers properly, and recruit and retain staff by making healthcare jobs attractive again. The Executive must build capacity in our public system rather than subsidising private profits. Last year, the House passed a similar amendment. I hope and trust that Members will do the same today.

We have known what the problems are for years. The question is this: do the Minister and Executive have the political will to fix those problems, or will we continue the predictable cycle of crises and private-sector profiteering while patients suffer and workers burn out? People demand and deserve better.

I will just expand on some of the figures. In the UK, there has been a 525-fold increase in the number of people who receive what is called "corridor care", which is treatment on trolleys. I suspect that the figure here is higher. I hope that the Minister can provide that figure today. I have lost count of how many times over the winter this year and in previous years I have seen stories on social media of people and their loved ones waiting 12 hours or more in a corridor to get appropriate treatment. That is completely unacceptable. Over two thirds of nurses with the RCN have reported delivering care in "overcrowded and unsuitable places" every day. That is not only unfair and unjust for patients but totally unsustainable for the people who work in the sector and for the sector more generally. The reason why we are in that situation is simple: long-term divestment in our NHS over the past 15 years or so. We have seen A&Es closed and run down. We have witnessed beds being pulled out of hospitals and not replaced. Disgracefully, we have seen repeated attempts to take advantage of our healthcare workers and deny them proper pay and pay parity in a timely manner.

As has been mentioned, we also have a situation where people who are medically fit for discharge are unable to leave the hospital or healthcare setting because there is no care package in place or available. Those issues are all completely connected. Despite the best efforts of underpaid care workers, the private, for-profit model does not work for patients or people who work in the sector. Patients often receive 15-minute appointments and do not receive the detailed one-to-one care that is required. Workers are not paid appropriately for travel and are out of pocket because of low wages more generally. It is bonkers that we have such a disconnected health system. Much is made about silo mentalities and the need for people to work together in this Building, but, when it comes to that part of the health service, that is not addressed or implemented.

Instead of throwing hundreds of millions of pounds of public money — good money — to the private healthcare sector, we should use that money to invest properly in publicly funded Health and Social Care workers and primary care. We do not have armies of healthcare workers in place, working for trusts, who can keep people healthy and out of hospital or work directly with patients who are ready to leave hospital or other healthcare settings in order to provide and put in place a proper care package. That is why I have tabled the amendment. I hope and trust that Members will support it.

Mr McGuigan: It is a worthwhile debate. I thank the Members who tabled the motion: it gives us the opportunity to discuss the reality that patients, families and healthcare workers experience inside our hospital emergency departments. Given that my contribution will focus on patients and staff, I will get the politics out of the way early. Yes, the Minister of Health, like all Executive Ministers, has a constrained budget and could easily spend more money if he had it. Unfortunately, successive British Governments and their austerity policies have pillaged our public services, particularly our health service. I genuinely believe that the only way in which we can fully redress the problems that our health service in the North faces and give our citizens the best possible outcomes is in the context of an agreed all-Ireland health service. Does that mean that we should sit back and do nothing until we get a new Ireland? Absolutely not.

Waiting times in emergency departments here are now among the worst in these islands. Our citizens deserve better. The problems that the motion identifies boil down to patient safety, staff welfare and system failure. It is the responsibility of us who work in this place to address all three of those issues. Patients regularly wait for hours, often into the following day, to be seen. Many are elderly, frail and disorientated. Some are babies and children. They are people of all ages and are injured or sick. Some are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and some are in the middle of a mental health crisis. They sit together on hard chairs in waiting rooms or in the back of an ambulance, and then, once admitted, they are put on trolleys in corridors or recliner chairs in observation areas until a bed becomes available. Dignity and privacy are now left at the door of our EDs.

The system is under intolerable strain. While it is a year-long issue, the problem becomes exacerbated at wintertime. What particularly baffles the public is the fact that winter pressure is entirely foreseeable. Distressed family members of elderly patients continually ask me what is being done to stop it happening year after year. It is a simple enough question. We see the same patterns every year with increasing severity. We have all heard and read the warnings from clinicians and professional bodies. We have read the Audit Office report and the Fiscal Council report, which is referenced in the motion.

As the Deputy Chair of the Health Committee, Danny Donnelly, stated, he and I visited the emergency department at Antrim Area Hospital on a Sunday evening over the Christmas period to see for ourselves the situation. We saw ambulances lined up and parked outside the entrance, unable to discharge their patients. We saw care in the corridors and patients sitting in chairs, awaiting admittance. It was particularly informative, as Danny said, to speak to the staff about their view of the root causes of the blockages and the pressures that they face. I thank the staff to whom we spoke that night and all the staff working in our hospitals and health service for their work. Doctors, nurses, paramedics and support staff are being asked to operate in extremely difficult conditions. They are, in effect, holding the health system together at that critical point of care.

Emergency departments are overcrowded not because of a failure in emergency departments but because of system-wide throughput problems. The Fiscal Council's sustainability report clearly identifies problems such as delayed discharges, insufficient step-down and community capacity and bottlenecks in social care and immediate care. When patients cannot move out of hospital beds, new patients cannot move in, leading to corridor care and ambulance stacking. Those issues have been diagnosed in detail, yet they remain largely unaddressed.

Mrs Dillon: I appreciate the Member's giving way. Does he agree that we need to put in place the real living wage for care workers as soon as possible in order to address some of the issues that he has just outlined?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Member has an extra minute.

Mr McGuigan: I totally concur. I fully support the introduction of the real living wage for home care workers. I will address home care in a bit more detail. Paying staff properly is obviously part of that issue.

Last week, at Question Time, the Health Minister said:

I am not sure that we all agree on that. I agree from a constituency point of view, where I see the difficulties that families have getting care packages to allow their loved ones to be discharged from hospital. However, since December and during January, I have been contacted by numerous care providers covering four trust areas telling me that they stand ready to do much more than they are being asked to do but face constraints and obstacles from the trusts and the Department. They tell me that they have the capacity to clear many of the patients who are currently unable to get hospital discharge. I certainly do not agree with the fact that it should take five years to resolve the problem.

Getting ambulance handover times reduced is also a necessity, and dealing with primary care is obviously an issue. I hope that Members will deal with those two issues in their contributions. I really hope that the Minister will give a commitment that winter pressure planning for 2026-27 will begin much earlier and that detailed plans will be published in a timely way. Patients deserve timely access to care at the point in their lives when they feel most vulnerable. Staff deserve to have safe, sustainable working conditions in which they know that they are making a difference —

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Your time is up.

Mr McGuigan: — rather than having stress and moral dilemma.

Mr Robinson: Like others, I appreciate the motion that has been proposed today. All winter to date, just about every day, the evidence across social media and from the accounts of our constituents and medical staff has been that EDs are totally gridlocked, ambulance handovers are under exceptional and unprecedented pressure and waiting lists across outpatient, inpatient and diagnostic services are at levels that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Official statistics for emergency care waiting times from July to September 2025 show that just 44·7% of patients were seen within four hours and that 10,879 patients spent over 12 hours in EDs in September alone.

On the evening of Wednesday 7 January, when I wrote my speech, the statistics for the winter period had not been released. I dread to think what poor statistics will be produced. On that evening, I looked at the average waiting times in Altnagelvin, which is the main and largest hospital in my constituency: they were sitting at 418 minutes — just under seven hours — just to be seen. That was reflected across the hospital network. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine's snapshot on 8 December 2025 of all nine major EDs found cubicle occupancy for patients awaiting beds at 137%, with 401 people waiting for an inpatient bed and 49% of them receiving care in non-designated spaces, including in corridors, on floors and in chairs. One patient had been in the ED for 124 hours — five days. Clinicians unanimously reported patients coming to harm in current conditions; indeed, the RCEM says that applying the standard mortality ratio to Northern Ireland's 12-hour admitted patient waits suggests a conservative estimate of 1,122 excess deaths in 2024 linked to long waits and unsafe conditions.

We all know that overcrowding is not just an ED problem; rather, there is a whole-system flow failure, a phenomenon that the RCEM has documented extensively, including the mortality risk already referred to that is associated with long delays from arrival to admission, including ambulance offload waits of eight hours. When an ambulance cannot hand over, it cannot respond; when ED staff cannot move patients into wards, in effect, the front of the hospital jams; and, when inpatients who are medically fit cannot be discharged, beds remain blocked. That is the simple cascade that leaves patients in hospital corridors and has the RCEM telling us that staff morale is at an all-time low and that people dread coming into work simply because they cannot provide the high standard of care that they wish to provide.

The Northern Ireland Fiscal Council's 'Sustainability Report 2022: special focus — Health' warned about the throughput constraints and the need to improve the efficiency of care delivery and hospital flow. Those warnings remain painfully relevant, even more so today. The winter preparedness plans published in recent years saw a range of measures, but, while they were worthy, with little funding for some they just have not been enough to prevent overcrowding and prolonged waits.

The RCEM's several recommendations included calling for social care arrangements to be improved to help with delayed discharges, thereby restoring patient flow. The 2025-26 winter blueprint acknowledges the structural drivers, such as ambulance handovers, bed flow, discharge problems, proposed improved handover targets, vaccination clinics and extra GP sessions, but bed occupancy and discharge pressures remain through the roof.

The RCEM's recommendations did not stand a chance this winter. At the start of the winter pressures period, my colleague Diane Dodds revealed that, on 1 October 2025, 589 inpatients who were fit to leave had been left languishing in hospital. Addressing delayed discharges needs to be at the top of the agenda. Any plan that does not properly resolve patient discharge and care package issues is doomed to fail, and hospitals and emergency departments will only ever operate at a fraction of their real capacity if the elephant in the room is not dealt with decisively.

Mr Chambers: Like other Members, I begin by acknowledging the very real pressures that patients and staff in our emergency departments face each and every day. Our health workers in particular also deserve our thanks, and, to be honest, they deserve better than easy sound bites and hindsight politics.

The motion is long on indignation but short on responsibility. It lists pressures as though they appeared overnight and reads as though healthcare and social care are simple systems with single levers that Ministers can pull at will. It is always easy to criticise from the sidelines.

The suggestion that winter pressures were "entirely foreseeable" and that no early planning took place is simply wrong. It was wrong when that claim was first made, and it is still wrong, but the Alliance Party believes that it knows more than the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) and every trust chief executive in the Province.

In recent months, there have been various debates in the Chamber, and briefings have been provided to the Committee for Health. The operational actions taken have been set out in some detail, with evidence of improved performance in key areas and hard facts that some Members prefer to ignore: reductions in 12-hour delays; improved ambulance handover times in several trusts; and targeted discharge efforts that, even given the social care challenges, created real capacity at critical moments. Those gains happened not by accident but because of planning and because of people making difficult decisions in real time.

I make it clear that I am not for one moment going to pretend that all is fine across our hospitals, because of course it is not. We are contacted daily about the pressures, and I am sure that MLAs' family members have had to go to accident and emergency departments.

I find it particularly disappointing, however, that the Members who tabled the motion call for assurances and timelines for winter 2026, as though nothing is already under way. I thought that the Minister had been unequivocal many times in the Chamber on the point that planning for future winters is already being done. In fact, it never stops. In early December, we all watched, with some trepidation, the rapid spread of the flu, but, in reality, its rising so early and peaking so quickly helped us avoid some of the worst immediate pressures in early January. Not even the best modelling can fully predict the future, however.

To demand what is already happening while accusing the Department of inaction is political theatre, not scrutiny. No one in the House has a magic wand that will instantly remove corridor care or eliminate queues in emergency departments. What we do have, however, is a responsibility to be honest with the public about the scale of the challenge and to support practical, evidence-based measures that stabilise the system while long-term reform continues.

As we can see, criticism comes easily to the Alliance Party, but our health services require MLAs to show willingness to engage with complexity rather than to reduce it to mere headlines. The motion offers little acknowledgement of the progress that has been made in extremely constrained circumstances and will certainly do nothing to help the morale of workers at the coalface.

The utterly reckless amendment from Mr Carroll would see patients come to harm. We do not live in an ideal world. Instead, we live in a world where the independent sector delivers a small proportion of activity overall, but it is activity that undoubtedly saves and prolongs lives each and every week.

Patients and staff do not need more motions like this one. Rightly, they expect leadership and sustained efforts, yet the signatories to the motion unfortunately fail to deliver either.

Mr McGrath: I have one of those speeches that starts by acknowledging the tone and intent of the motion and contributions to the debate, but, after the previous speech, I will skip to my second paragraph.

People are waiting on trolleys and waiting in corridors. Ambulance crews are waiting outside emergency departments, unable to respond to the next 999 call because the system cannot absorb the patients whom they are already caring for. No one in the Chamber is blind to the pressures that our emergency departments and hospital systems are under, and no one should pretend that winter has caught us by surprise. As has been referenced before, it comes roughly at the same time every year.

The pressures were foreseeable and were predicted, and we have repeatedly warned about the difficulties that exist in the system to deal with them. It is important to outline — I am sure that most would agree — that the debate is not about blaming the front-line staff; in fact, it is the opposite. The ambulance crews, nurses, doctors, porters and support staff are the ones who are holding the system together with patience, goodwill and hope, which frankly, should not be taken for granted. Patience is not a safe staffing strategy, goodwill does not put food on the tables and hope is, sadly, diminishing amongst staff. When an ambulance crew is parked outside an emergency department for hours, the system has failed them and has failed the patient waiting at home who cannot get an ambulance because the crew are stuck outside a hospital. We all know the result of that and the tragic stories of people waiting for hours upon hours for an ambulance, some even losing their lives while waiting.

Throughput is the issue. Patient flow is the issue. Until we fix what happens after someone arrives at the hospital, no amount of public messaging about alternatives will solve it. Delayed discharges, lack of social care capacity and workforce shortages create a logjam that backs right up to the front door of hospitals and outside in the driveways and houses of the people who are waiting.

I get it. I know that I am an opposition MLA, and my words will be treated as, "Here go the Opposition again, giving off about bad things". However, do not take my word for it; hear the voices of the people who have been left behind. Healthcare staff and patients have reached out to me directly, and I will read out some of their quotes. One says:

Another one said:

Another said:

Another said:

Another said:

The obvious outworking is that patients who are ready to leave hospital but cannot secure a domiciliary care package are left in hospital waiting, causing the person in the ED to wait, causing the person in the ambulance to wait and causing the person dialling 999 to wait. As the SDLP said in its document last year, 'Help Can't Wait'.

Having heard all that, I now want to ask this serious question of the Minister, and I do so in a constructive spirit: what is it going to take for you to act with the urgency that patients and staff deserve? Telling people that the system will take five years to fix offers no comfort to the person who dials 999 tonight. It offers no reassurance to the family sitting beside a loved one who is on a trolley, and it offers no incentive to the paramedic or nurse who is wondering whether staying in the system is sustainable. Unless you are willing to pay social care staff properly or, worse still, promise them a living wage and then renege on that, what is keeping them here? Unless you are willing to introduce safe staffing legislation, what confidence can we have that staff conditions will improve rather than deteriorate?

The frustration for many of us is due to the fact that we knew that the problems were coming. We had high hopes last year because there were lots of promises about blank pages and sitting down and getting early resolutions to be prepared, and it did not take us until November before all that was obliterated, and that was shocking.

Mrs Dillon: I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate and to address the issues raised in the motion. No one in the Chamber denies the immense pressure being experienced by patients and staff in our emergency departments. Those pressures are real, visible and must be addressed. It is important that the debate reflects where we are now and not where we were last year. Health workers, nurses, doctors, paramedics, porters, care workers and admin staff are the backbone of our system. They work under extraordinary pressure, particularly through winter periods, and deserve recognition, respect and support.

The Department of Health now has a record budget of over £8·4 billion, supported by additional allocations through the monitoring rounds. No previous Health Minister has operated with that level of Executive backing. That is fact, and it is not just financial backing. That is real, genuine backing, and that does not remove the problems and challenges that face the Health Minister. The key question is not simply how much money is available but how it is being used. Are we doing things differently? Are we learning the lessons of previous winters? Rita Devlin, of the Royal College of Nursing, was clear this week when she said that the Department needs to change how it delivers services. Those are the nurses, the very people who are delivering the service, so we need to hear the Minister outline how he is taking on board what Rita and others are saying.

None of us wants to see a repeat of what happened last year: ambulances queued outside emergency departments, patients waiting for hours or days, and exhausted staff struggling to cope. The situation is unacceptable. I was contacted by a family whilst in the Chamber last week because their mummy lay on the ground in the street in Dungannon, in the rain, for over seven hours waiting on an ambulance. The risk to her health and the absolute indignity for that lady was a horrendous experience for her and her family.

The Chamber and the public expect to see real outcomes in our hospitals, GP practices and in people's homes, regardless of when the planning began. The greatest difference that we know can be made is by keeping people out of hospital, and that must be a priority. We have talked much about the shift left, but that means strengthening primary care, and that means investment. Improving access to GPs needs investment — investing in community nursing, creating better pathways for access to the care needed and ensuring that domiciliary care packages are in place.

If we are serious about easing pressures on emergency departments, we must strengthen frailty pathways across the system. Older people living with frailty are among the most likely to present at A&E in crisis, often because the right support was not available earlier in the community. Frailty pathways, including rapid assessment, same-day emergency care and hospital-to-home services, allow people to be treated safely without unnecessary admission. They protect dignity, improve flow through hospitals and ensure that those people are not ending up in EDs, which, quite honestly, are not suitable places for them, and we know all the reasons for that. That is why we need better use of community-based pathways, including dementia-specific support, to prevent avoidable admissions and support timely discharge. This is about patient dignity, system flow and staff safety.

I want to be clear about the role of scrutiny. The Health Committee has repeatedly raised concerns about transparency. We can scrutinise only the information we are given, so if we are serious about reform, we need to have honest conversations, not only about the scale of the challenge, as was outlined by the Member across the away, but about how, when and why service delivery will change. We need to understand how the Department is going to address those issues and how we will change how services are delivered so that we can scrutinise that and consult properly with all the stakeholders and have honest conversations.

This is really important stuff. Speaking as somebody who spent most of Christmas in hospital with my father, I can tell you that the staff are doing outstanding work in very difficult circumstances. We need to look seriously at how we are delivering services and the pathways. I did see through that experience where pathways maybe could be improved. When people are going to EDs and repeatedly ending up back on the same ward for the same reason, is an ED the best way for that admission to happen? Maybe it is, but we do not know. We do not get the opportunity to understand why that is happening. The Committee just needs to get more information to scrutinise and understand what is happening, why it is happening and how we can help you, Minister, to fix it.

Mrs Dodds: Like others, I start my remarks by recalling a constituent's experience. A couple of weeks ago, I was phoned by a constituent whose elderly father-in-law had fallen. It took 23 hours to get an ambulance to that gentleman, and, 24 hours after that, he was still in the back of the ambulance at Craigavon hospital, leaving him confused and the family extremely worried about him. Everyone across the Chamber can recount a similar story, and that is not the health service that we want to be talking about today.

I support the general thrust of the motion, but it misses a quite important point. It is not about the time in which you have to prepare; it is about what you prepare for and the scale of your ambition in preparing for winter, because, as sure as day follows night, we will have a winter and a series of winter pressures. I put that on the record.

Mr Donnelly: Thanks to the Member for giving way. Does she agree that the most important part of addressing winter pressures is building capacity in our community so that we can discharge people safely and in a timely way when their treatment is finished?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Member has an extra minute.

Mrs Dodds: Thank you. I was just about to come on to that, so the intervention is very timely.

One of the problems with the winter preparedness plan is that it failed in the scale of its ambition. It did not address and tackle head-on the really big issues. The big issue is the flow through hospitals. If we cannot get patients out of hospital, others will be queued in corridors, waiting for a bed. I looked at Friday's figures. Last Friday, 640 patients were declared medically fit for discharge from our hospitals but were in an inpatient bed. Meanwhile, 350 people in our EDs were assessed as requiring admission to one of those beds and were either sitting or lying uncomfortably in a corridor or some other unsatisfactory space in an ED. They were among the 373 people who waited more than 12 hours in an ED in Northern Ireland. Over the previous week, 2,768 people waited more than 12 hours. That means that 22·5% of everybody who attended an ED in Northern Ireland waited that length of time. It does not take someone who is incredibly smart or anything else to tell us that, if you cannot get people out of hospital, it will be extremely difficult to find beds for others. Minister, despite all the planning groups that have been set up, that issue still has to be tackled, and we will not see an improvement until we tackle it. That is one of the most important things that we can do.

I want to address a couple of the projects in the winter preparedness plan, including geriatric assessment and care plans. Those were to be directed at three practices in west Belfast. How many of the 10,000 medical plans have been carried out? Take the acute-care-at-home service. That is what I mean when I talk about scale. At one of our Committee meetings, Tracey McCaig said that the Northern Trust did not have an acute-care-at-home service. She said that it was being set up in November and would cater for 10 patients. Clearly, that is great for the 10 patients who get it, but it is not being done on the scale that is needed. In addition, how have the pressures on mental health and learning disability beds been improved through the winter preparedness plan?

I will say a few words on the amendment. I agree in one sense with the amendment in that we should expand and invest in our staff and healthcare facilities. However, I will not vote for the amendment, because the reality is that we need the private sector to take some of the pressure off healthcare waiting lists. Just think of those 540,000 people in Northern Ireland who cannot get a first consultant appointment and have been waiting for many years. Another reason why I will not be voting for it is that this is the same Chamber that regularly votes for, and asks for, more and more money for the reimbursement scheme to send people — where? — to private clinics in Dublin. Anyone who votes for that needs to think very, very carefully about what they are doing.

Mr Honeyford: It has been a really good and honest discussion — bar one contribution — that has been focused on people, but, with new Ulster Unionist leadership, we are getting new Ulster Unionist arrogance. Blaming the Alliance Party for criticising their Minister is pushing it to the absolute limit. The motion focuses on the extreme pressures that are on the people who are attending our EDs. Those pressures are felt most acutely by our constituents, who are the patients who are being left on trolleys or in ambulances or are the staff who are having to work under conditions that none of us would accept for ourselves or for our families.

What has been happening, for years, in our health system has been shocking, as has the failure of concurrent Ministers to deal with it and bring about change and reform. At this point, it has, in fact, been normalised. As has been said repeatedly across the Chamber, the crisis was entirely foreseeable; it was forecast because we could see what was happening, year-on-year. It has been simply a failure to plan and to then resource that plan. I spoke yesterday to an ED consultant who said that what was previously a winter crisis has been left to become a 12-months-of-the-year crisis. It has become standard practice, but it spikes even further in the winter months.

The Nuffield Trust's analysis of the productivity of Northern Ireland's health service sets out clearly why emergency care is under sustained strain. Its conclusion is set out clearly in front of us: emergency departments are not the problem. Dedicated staff are working flat out, but delays that are caused by a system that backs up with beds being blocked — patients being trapped because they cannot get home — leave our staff firefighting instead of doing what they are paid to do, which is treat people. We have brilliant front-line staff. All of us need to thank the staff for the job and the work that they do every day. They do an incredible job to make sure that everyone who comes into that department gets the best emergency care possible. It is the system around them that is failing them. They cannot move patients through or on, and that creates delays that no amount of goodwill on their part can fix.

Miss McAllister: Will the Member give way?

Mr Honeyford: Yes, of course.

Miss McAllister: You said that you spoke to an ED consultant last night, and you mentioned healthcare workers there. Going by that latest discussion, do you agree that all these issues are affecting morale?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Honeyford: I absolutely agree. The difficulty with a lot of this is that, as the staff said, the situation has become normalised; this has become the standard. That is what is being said. When I was speaking to those staff yesterday, they said that every problem is being filtered through the emergency department. People cannot get access to their GP — something that the Public Accounts Committee has been dealing with recently — and, when they do, the practice and outworking to be followed to get them into special care hubs mean that they still have to go through emergency departments. Everything is being filtered through that one department.

When I was chatting on the phone last night, there were 10 ambulances sitting outside the Ulster Hospital: one of them was an emergency that went straight in, and nine were for patients who were catered for and cared for in those ambulances. The patients in five of those ambulances could have been dealt with by GP out-of-hours or community care. Those are the sorts of cases that are being left in emergency departments, because the services elsewhere are not there.

Our emergency departments are not failing to meet time targets because staff are not working hard enough or because demand has surged suddenly; they are failing because the system is not functioning. Northern Ireland has a persistent problem of poor throughput. Patients who are medically fit cannot be moved on because there is nowhere for them to go: there is restricted care in the community; beds remain blocked; ambulances queue outside; and the corridors become holding areas. In England, there was a discussion about turning the lights off or dimming them at night. Hospital staff could not get over the fact that we have to keep the lights on in Northern Ireland while people are sleeping, because so many people lie in corridors in our EDs for days upon days.

Our emergency departments are left to carry the consequences of the Department's actions. That issue was highlighted in the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council's 'Sustainability Report 2022: special focus — Health'. At that time, the Fiscal Council explicitly warned that, unless the issues of delayed discharge and patient flow were addressed, winter pressures would continue to get worse. That warning remains. It was never acted on, no urgency was ever given to dealing with it, and patients, our constituents, the public and hospital staff pay the price.

We need the details of the winter plans to be published as soon as possible. We need those plans to be brought through, year-on-year, to allow for a better workforce, realistic bed modelling and genuine integration in social care and community services. That would bring a lot of transparency, so that gaps could be identified earlier and the Minister and the Department could be held to account for closing or not closing those gaps.

The choice before the Assembly is clear. It is refreshing to have a debate in which, in the main, everybody is speaking with one voice to say that we need to back our EDs and move to bring change.

Mr McCrossan: 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.

Mr Gaston: When I come to the Chamber and raise specific issues, it is often because members of the public have asked me to raise those issues on their behalf. The Health Department has been by far the most frustrating Department for me during my 19 months in office. It is disappointing that, on many occasions, I have had to send constituents recordings of what has taken place in the Chamber or extracts from Hansard and tell them that I raised the issue but the Minister, in his summing-up, simply ignored the points that I had made. Similarly, when it comes to questions for written answer, the Minister knows that some of my questions have been sitting with his Department for nine months but should have been answered within 10 days. I submitted a freedom of information request to ask when he received the draft answers to those and other questions, and I was told in a response that I received just last week that the Department is in such a state of chaos that it cannot even tell me when the Minister received those draft answers. It is not political theatre, Mr Chambers; it is the reality that MLAs face in this place. It is no surprise that patients face the same chaos when they try to get medical care.

When Mr Donnelly proposed the motion, he said that he was speaking on behalf of patients on waiting lists, patients on trolleys and patients waiting in A&E departments or in ambulances. I want to give a voice to the families who have dialled 999 to call an ambulance and have waited with anxiety in their house. Often, when the ambulance comes, it can be too late. I think today of the Darragh family. Willy Darragh sadly passed away in December 2024 after having chest pains in his home. His wife rang 999 only to be advised that the quickest way that she could get her husband to A&E was to take him in the car. Sadly, Mr Darragh never made it to hospital: he took a heart attack in a lay-by on his way there. In April 2025, the Ambulance Service confirmed that an ambulance was, indeed, sitting in the Ballymena depot but that, due to being within the last hour of shift, the crew could not be assigned. As Willy Darragh was classed as a category 2 case, that crew could not be assigned, because of action short of strike. Let that sink in.

Recently, I asked a narrow operational question about whether crews are at least being made aware that a category 2 call has been logged within the last hour of their shift. Instead of addressing the issue, the response was a vague, waffly answer about winter plans, flu trends and hospital discharge pressures. It did not say a word about ambulance call-handling procedures, notification protocols, industrial action constraints or whether any system change had been made to alert crews that a category 2 call is sitting waiting. Nine months on, it appears that no progress has been made and that no lessons have been learnt. The Minister may be on notice, but he is in his place today. I trust that he will give the Assembly a clear and direct answer about whether any progress has been made on that critical and crucial issue. What measures are now in place to ensure that ambulance crews are informed when emergency calls are logged but not responded to? Not everyone is in the union. A policy of not advising crews that a category 2 call has come in has been fatal in the past and, if the situation is not addressed —

Miss McAllister: Will the Member give way?

Mr Gaston: — will prove fatal again. I am happy to give way.

Miss McAllister: I am glad that the Member has raised that issue. The situation is shocking. Everyone has a right to strike, but, in our engagements, I was given assurances that, if they were told of a category 2 call, staff would react. I am therefore very disappointed.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Gaston: The Member makes a good point. If staff are told a category 2 call has come in — for example, a man with chest pains who has a history of heart problems — I have no doubt that the crew will go out, but the problem is that the crew is not being told that such a call has come in. That is a failing, and it is something that should have been put right nine months ago. I believe that it still has not been put right today. I ask the Health Minister to tell us — I will even allow him an intervention — whether he has put that right. It should be addressed today and not months in the future. As I said, the policy has been fatal in the past, and it will be fatal again if we do not get it right.

Last week, the Member for Upper Bann Diane Dodds raised directly with the Minister the deeply troubling stats on emergency and critical calls. She told the House that she had received a message that the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service was about to call a critical state and that there were 160 emergency and critical calls from those waiting for ambulances that could not be answered.
Minister, it is time for you to get a grip on the issue. It is time for you to sort it out once and for all. Our constituents deserve better than they are getting. It is not the fault of the Ambulance Service. It is not the fault of the crews.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): OK. Time is up. Thank you.

Mr Gaston: There is something wrong with the policy, and that needs to be addressed today.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Mr Gaston, your time is up.

I am now going to call the Minister of Health, but I will leave it up to him to determine whether he wants to make a start now. He has indicated that he does not.

The Business Committee has arranged to meet at 1.00 pm. I therefore propose, by leave of the Assembly, to suspend the sitting until 2.00 pm. The debate will continue after Question Time, when the next Member to be called will be the Minister to respond to the debate.

Mrs Long (The Minister of Justice): The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) does not comment on individual prisoners or their management. NIPS does not operate a Christmas home leave scheme, as is the case in some other jurisdictions. However, eligible prisoners who are already engaged in pre-release testing may be approved for temporary release as part of that process, which coincides with the Christmas period. Each individual is the subject of a comprehensive multi-agency risk assessment prior to approval of any period of temporary release, and all those released temporarily coinciding with the Christmas 2025 period returned to custody without incident.

The Prison Service is responsible for helping prisoners to rehabilitate so that they can return to the community and avoid reoffending. That work makes Northern Ireland safer and reduces the number of crime victims. Pre-release testing is an important part of rehabilitation and has been consistently endorsed by independent inspectors. Most prisoners go through the various stages of pre-release testing successfully and reintegrate into the community. Those prisoners are much less likely to reoffend and create more victims, so pre-release testing is and will remain an essential part of rehabilitation.

Mr Brett: I thank the Minister for that update. Whether or not there is a policy in place that specifically allows Christmas release, the fact is that a murderer was released over Christmas, as was someone who was convicted of stabbing a pensioner in the head with a screwdriver. In my opinion and, I think, in the public's opinion, a life sentence should mean a life sentence. In your forthcoming sentencing Bill, do you plan to increase the minimum tariff for those who are convicted of such heinous crimes?

Mrs Long: As the Member will know, a life sentence in Northern Ireland means a life sentence. However, that sentence does not have to be served solely in custody. Any life sentence prisoner who is released when their tariff has been served, and that tariff is set by a member of the independent judiciary, can be recalled to prison at any time should they breach the conditions of their licence or pose such a risk as to make those in charge of their supervision believe that they cannot be managed in the community.

The idea that simply containing people in prison for life is the solution to violent crime is debunked by the American system, where the safety of the public is not improved by people often receiving multiple and consecutive life sentences with no hope of any rehabilitation. In fact, it has led to a much-less-safe prison environment.

Mr Beattie: That is an important point, but will the Minister outline the legal basis by which pre-release testing through secondary legislation — rule 27 of the Prison and Young Offenders Centre Rules (Northern Ireland) 1995 — can override primary legislation — the Life Sentences (Northern Ireland) Order 2001 — that states that a prisoner should not be released until they have completed their life sentence?

Mrs Long: The Life Sentences Order refers to permanent release back into the community at the end of a sentence. Therefore, no one is permanently released from prison until they have served their tariff or their sentence, depending on the nature of the sentence. However, rule 27 provides the Prison Service with the opportunity for those who are still serving their tariff and still serving their sentence to have short periods of release. Reasons for that include compassionate, health and other grounds, for which those short, temporary periods of release into the community are possible for the protection and enhancement of their rehabilitation. Therefore, it is not at odds with the Life Sentences Order because that is about permanent release into the community, as opposed to temporary periods of release while someone still remains in a custodial environment.

Mr Tennyson: Will the Minister outline the risk-assessment process that is undertaken as part of pre-release testing?

Mrs Long: When the Parole Commissioners make recommendations on an individual prisoner, the Prison Service will fully risk assess that person and begin work to prepare them for release and reintegration into society. The risk-assessment tool used is primarily the assessment case management and evaluation (ACE) system, which will be carried out by the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. A multi-agency case conference will also consider all relevant information, with subject experts invited as required.

There is no presumption in favour of granting leave at the expense of the primary consideration, which is the protection of the public. Prisoners are initially tested under the supervision of prison staff, progressing to periods of unaccompanied release before, potentially, progressing to living and working in the community. At every stage of the process, the level of risk that they present is kept under constant review. Indeed, those who fail at any stage of pre-release testing are brought back into custody, as would be the case normally, and suffer the consequences of the failure that may be appropriate, whether that be a further trial or under prison rules. They then go before the Parole Commissioners again to seek advice as to how to proceed.

Mr Durkan: Will the Minister ensure that, if there is to be a review of the current temporary release policy, the review will also cover, along with the rehabilitation of the offender, the release of information about eligible prisoners and the impact on victims and their families, including the impact of sensationalist reporting?

Mrs Long: That is a very important point. There will always be those who will fail pre-release testing, but they are not the majority of prisoners who go through the system, most of whom take the opportunity for rehabilitation seriously and actually want to change their conduct and behaviour. It is the role of the Prison Service to do that. We do so, however, recognising that it is an incredibly sensitive issue, particularly for victims of crime.

A number of Members will be aware of the victims' information scheme. That is being reviewed because we have, in recent days, had highlighted to us some failures of that system in particular cases. I have asked that a further review of that system be undertaken. As things stand, victims are required to register for that service. It is often the case that victims no longer want to receive information about the perpetrator of a crime. They do not want contact with the justice system after the case has concluded; they want to put it behind them and move on. However, others may rightly want to be kept apprised of what is happening with a particular prisoner, especially when it comes to release, in order that they can ensure that there are no shocks if they are walking down the high street in their local town and bump into the person, who is there without their knowledge. Each victim can make that balanced decision. I want to make sure that, when victims register with that scheme, our system is as robust as possible. That work is ongoing in the Department.

When it comes to sensationalist reporting on such issues, of course people will say that they want to see that eliminated. Ultimately, however, there is the question of public interest. People want to know what is happening in our prisons and they want to have confidence in the system. Let us be clear: people would not be serving lengthy sentences in prison that would require pre-release testing had they not committed pretty serious offences in the first place.

Mrs Long: With your permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to address questions 2, 8 and 12 together, as they speak to the same issue.

As I previously advised the House, engagement to resolve the CBA's concerns has been ongoing since before the outset of its action in November 2024. I remain committed to continuing constructive dialogue. My focus very much remains on solving the dispute in the interests of victims and witnesses, who are suffering very real harm as a result of service withdrawal. That impact cannot be overstated.

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet representatives of some of the organisations that are providing support to those who are affected. I commend those organisations again for their efforts to provide information, advice and support. I am, of course, working with them to identify any further assistance that could usefully be provided to victims and witnesses while we continue to strive to end the damaging service withdrawal. To that end, I held a constructive meeting with CBA representatives again last week, and I have proposed a means of navigating the impasse that builds on the work that has been done to date by the working group and that, I believe, would allow the CBA's concerns to be addressed at pace and fulfil our requirements to appropriately manage public money. Crucially, the proposed approach will also involve the Solicitors' Criminal Bar Association, which has remained engaged and committed to the agreed process, and which has continued to deliver services to its clients throughout. As the proposed approach is a matter of ongoing discussion with the CBA membership, it would not be appropriate to elaborate further at this stage. I will, however, keep the Chamber updated.

Mr O'Toole: Minister, it is important to put on the record that you said something on the record and on the airwaves about a barrister's earnings that was entirely inaccurate. That will have set back relations that have already been frayed between you and the Criminal Bar Association. The people who are suffering are victims and witnesses of crime who are awaiting the criminal justice process. Minister, it speaks to a deeper tendency that people have observed in you, which is a desire to win an argument rather than solve a problem. Will you commit now to entering into a process of mediation with the Criminal Bar Association, as suggested by the Lady Chief Justice?

Mrs Long: I note that, every time that the Member asks a question, he tries in some way to impugn my character or my integrity as part of his questioning. It can never simply be that there is a disagreement and that I am trying to resolve that disagreement. He always has to have a dig at me personally when he asks his question. That is not what I am here to answer.

I have already put on the record my error in that quote. Let us be absolutely clear then, for the avoidance of doubt. One barrister — one barrister — received £3·98 million over a three-and-a-half-year period that ended in September 2025. That amount was just over the cumulative total paid to 53% of their colleagues involved in criminal legal aid work over the same period. Those are the facts of the matter, and people can make of those facts what they wish. It demonstrates the core point that I was trying to make, which is that the fact that young barristers are not able to earn a living is not down to the rates of pay but down to the poor distribution of cases amongst the Bar and the concentration of large numbers of cases with a small number of barristers.

I am happy to correct the record where I have been wrong, despite what some people say, and I am not about winning an argument here. I am about protecting public money, and I have to be. Were I to come to the Chamber in the context of the budgetary constraints that we face having been profligate in my spending of public money, I am sure that the leader of the Opposition would be the first to his feet to suggest that that is a character trait of mine.

Mr Harvey: Minister, in your statement last week, you noted that 74% of legal aid expenditure went to just 22% of criminal defence counsel. What more can be done by all involved to ensure that funds and work are being better distributed?

Mrs Long: I thank the Member for his question, and I think that that is a key issue. We know that there are high levels of attrition in the criminal Bar, particularly with newly qualified barristers, and that it is very difficult for people to get, if you like, a foot on the ladder and to gain experience. There are competing tensions in this. Some people will say that they want to have the best possible and most experienced barrister, and that is, of course, everyone's right whether they are legally aided or not. Equally, we have to have a profession that is sustainable, and that relies on being able to give newly qualified barristers the experience that they need to be able to become those most experienced in their field and in the profession. With an ageing criminal Bar and with that deficit of young people being able to make their way, it is part of the overall review of enabling access to justice that we have been taking forward as a Department.

Part of that will be around the issue of refresher fees. I do not intend to labour the issue of refresher fees again today, because I realise that it is complex and is subject to discussions with the CBA at this time. I believe that my officials are with the CBA at the moment; at least, they are meant to be if things have gone according to plan. Refresher fees will be incredibly important in redistributing some of the work within the criminal Bar, as will some of the reform that we are hoping to do on the various court tiers. I want to see a fairly paid, sustainable criminal Bar and solicitor profession, but I do not create all the conditions for that. My only leverage is around legal aid. The remainder, on sustainability of the profession, is a matter for the Bar Council itself and for the Law Society, but I will do what I can to support any action that they might take to make that more possible.

Ms Egan: Thank you, Minister. Will you please outline the amount that we are spending on criminal legal aid per capita and how that compares with the rest of the United Kingdom?

Mrs Long: At the moment, we spend around £44 a head on criminal legal aid in Northern Ireland. The equivalent in England, Scotland and Wales is around £22 a head. There are reasons why that may be the case in the Northern Ireland context, however there are significant differences.

One of my concerns in enabling access to justice, for example, is that the means test that applies for eligibility to legal aid is set so that the majority of people who do not qualify under that means test still do not find it affordable to access justice.

What I would like to do? I have described it as a funnel. I would like the means test to be broader and encompass more people: for example, those who are working but in low-income jobs and may not be able to afford legal advice. I want it to be focused on getting the right advice as early as possible, so that we avoid burdening the court system down the line. I also want to look at the types of cases that are funded to ensure that those are the ones that have the biggest impact on an individual or on points of public law, so that we do not fund anything that is not absolutely essential.

There is a definite difference in Northern Ireland. I do not want to read too much into it, but, in fairness, we cannot neglect the fact that we spend more on criminal legal aid than other parts of these islands.

Ms Sheerin: Minister, will you clarify what meetings or conversations you have had with the CBA to try to bring an end to the strike? What engagement have you had with the Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime regarding the delays felt as a result of the strike by those who have experienced crime?

Mrs Long: When I made my statement last week, I set out the engagement that I had had. I had written to members of the criminal Bar individually to apprise them, first, of the action that I had taken in respect of the request that had been made of me around what we refer to as the "16% uplift" in fees — actually, in some cases, it is more than 16%, but that was the broad sweep of uplift that had happened — and in respect of setting up the working group as requested under the chairmanship Judge Burgess. As I went along, I set out all the other asks that had been made and the progress on those. Members of the Justice Committee, who have perhaps been watching this more closely, will be aware that we postponed the issue of cases left on the books until the end of the process in order to give us more time to work with the criminal Bar to address that issue. I have also looked at interim payments, which are important for the cash flow of solicitors and young barristers. We have done lots of things.

I met the criminal Bar last week, as I said, and it was a constructive meeting. In response to my letter of 5 January, I got a much clearer idea of what it was that the criminal Bar actually wanted to discuss at this stage. We were able to sit down and look at that ask. Not all of it will be achievable, and I think that they appreciate that that is the case. I sat down with them to look at how we could handle those issues in a way that would expedite a return to full service delivery in the Crown Court and to press with them that, as an interim measure, I would like to see the derogations that have been requested for the most serious cases to be dealt with as generously as possible.

I also met last week the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), the voluntary and community sector support organisations —

Mr Speaker: Time is up, Minister.

Mrs Long: — and the Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime.

Mr Carroll: Minister, it appears that you and your Department are now taking a different approach to the criminal barristers' strike, which is certainly welcome. Have you any concerns, Minister, that, if you do not adequately fund criminal barristers and do not meet their demands more generally, they may go after work in more financially lucrative areas of law, leaving working-class communities, in particular, without effective representation in the court system?

Mrs Long: I have always been clear that I am supportive of the criminal Bar and criminal solicitors and the work that they do. The solicitors' criminal Bar has provided me with evidence, as part of the working group, that has allowed us to move on a parole pilot and to increase PACE fees to ensure that people who are in the courts and need support immediately get it. What I will not do is pay additional fees to people who are already being paid particularly well, unless they can prove with evidence that the uplifts in those fees are justified. Tom Burgess said that there was justification for a 16% uplift on the basis of the evidence that was presented to him. He presented that to me, I accepted that, and I backdated it to December 2024.

To be absolutely clear, there has been no change in my position. I have always said that, when given the evidence that there is a requirement for fees to be changed, I am willing to respond positively to it. I have done more than say it; I have done it. What I will not do, however, is depart from 'Managing Public Money Northern Ireland' and the accountability that is required of me as Justice Minister in that regard.

Mrs Long: Northern Ireland search and rescue (NISAR) coordinates, supports and assures the quality of voluntary search and rescue provision for high-risk missing persons across Northern Ireland to ensure that the statutory risk tasking authority, which is responsible for requesting, directing and overseeing search and rescue deployment, has access to the appropriate capability and capacity to support delivery of search and rescue operations within the NISAR remit.

When organisations apply to join NISAR, the application process facilitates the gathering of relevant information against set criteria, including the skills that each organisation can provide and that will be deployed by the statutory tasking authority. That capability is assessed by a NISAR subgroup of statutory organisations with responsibility for providing search and rescue services against any gaps in current service provision. Through that process, NISAR can identify where an organisation may add value in supporting the tasking authority in high-risk missing person searches. The process for applications to join NISAR is focused on assessing capability, readiness and suitability to contribute to the NISAR arrangements.

A review and refresh of the NISAR framework, including the application process, is in progress. The Department continues to support the NISAR voluntary organisations through ongoing engagement and support on operational search and rescue issues at practitioners group meetings. The Department also provides approximately £100,000 of grant funding each year, subject to availability of budget year-on-year, which is shared across the current nine voluntary search and rescue organisations to help to sustain their capability.

Mr Gildernew: I thank the Minister for her answer and welcome the reference to a review. However, Minister, what you said totally fails to chime with what I hear from groups in my constituency, such as Tyrone Underwater Search and Recovery, which is based in Dungannon. Members of that group fundraise for themselves, volunteer and equip themselves. They volunteer in some of the most dangerous and difficult situations for families to try to save lives or, unfortunately, sometimes, recover people who have not survived. They tell me that they cannot get through the door of that system. They cannot even find out what they need to do. Minister, will you commit to meeting me or for some of your officials to do so, in order that I can explain to those groups how that process is so different from the one that you have just described?

Mrs Long: The process is no different from the one that I described. I am aware of the organisation to which you referred and that it had approached NISAR for additional information but had not applied for membership. To be clear, the decision on the accepted standard and qualifications that are required is reviewed and considered by the policy and practitioners group under the guidance of the PSNI, because it is the tasking authority. As the tasking authority, it has legal responsibility for managing search and rescue incidents, so it is for it to determine whether voluntary rescue organisations may be used and which ones. I understand from the PSNI that, in the case of a voluntary organisation with deep-sea diving skills, the standard provided by a voluntary diving team may not meet the standard of a commercial one and that that has been an issue around tasking.

We are, of course, happy to meet the Member's request for a meeting. However, we offered a meeting when you wrote to me on 25 September, and you have not yet taken that offer up.

Mr Martin: The Minister, like my colleague across the way, is aware that K9 Search and Rescue is based in my constituency. Can she update me on whether it is on the NISAR register yet? Will she meet me to discuss how it could improve its application, if it is not yet on the register?

Mrs Long: It is not yet on the register. As you are aware, on the basis of the working group's assessment there was no identified further need at the time that it applied. The rules were applied as they stand at the moment. That decision was appealed, and the final stage of appeal came to me. The rules, as they are at this point in time, have been correctly applied, so that decision was not overturned. However, as I said, a review of access to the NISAR list is available. It may therefore be worth considering whether a meeting would be helpful later, once those reviews are under way.

I am aware of that organisation's work, and I have met them. This is not about individual organisations but about the capacity that is required in the work of those involved in those high-risk missing persons cases. The review and refresh of the NISAR framework documentation may be a better opportunity for us to engage on the issue, because the appeal on the original application has been exhausted. The organisation can, of course, reapply down the line.

Mrs Long: The UK Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently making its way through Westminster, contains provision to criminalise the possession and publication of pornography portraying strangulation and suffocation. I have been engaging with the UK Government and intend, subject to Members' agreement, to extend that provision to Northern Ireland to ensure that similar protections are afforded here.

The provision aims to strengthen existing protections provided under section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which extends to Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales and criminalises the possession of extreme pornographic images. Under the existing provision, an image falls within the scope of the offence where it portrays an act that threatens a person's life. However, the independent review of pornography commissioned by the previous UK Government and carried out by Baroness Bertin was concerned that images of non-fatal strangulation or suffocation may not be caught by the offence, having found no evidence of anyone being prosecuted for content on the basis of such images. Worryingly, the review also highlighted that strangulation and suffocation pornographic content is rife on mainstream platforms and is having real-world impacts on how people are having sex, particularly amongst young people.

The provision proposed in the Crime and Policing Bill implements the recommendations of that review that depictions of non-fatal strangulation and suffocation should be clearly and explicitly captured in illegal pornography offences. Non-fatal strangulation and asphyxiation or suffocation is already illegal across the UK. As Members know, I provided for that offence in the Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. However, its depiction in pornography normalises the behaviour and, as the review found, is having a malign influence on men and boys' perceptions of its real-world impact.

Mr McMurray: Thank you, Minister. How does that fit into the wider package of measures that you have brought and will bring forward to combat abusive behaviours online and in the digital sphere?

Mrs Long: Members will know that I am passionate about that. Where possible, I want to address serious sexual offending. In the previous mandate, I introduced a new domestic abuse offence that marked a step change in capturing controlling and coercive behaviour. I introduced new offences of stalking, upskirting, downblousing and cyberflashing and four new offences to tackle adults who pretend to be a child with a view to sexual grooming that bolstered the child grooming offences and are unique to Northern Ireland. I also created a stand-alone offence of non-fatal strangulation and enhanced protections around offences of the abuse of a position of trust and the disclosing of private sexual images. Those measures have added real, tangible and valuable protections, and the extension of the Bill will add to the cadre of offences that we are dealing with.

It is important that people recognise just how serious the issue is, particularly for young people. The study that was done and the evidence that was presented to it showed that a significant number of young women around the age of 14 had already been subjected to suffocation and strangulation. Young men as young as 10 had asked teachers how they could safely choke girls during sex, and 13% of sexually active girls aged 14 to 17 had already been choked. If we do not get to grips with the issue now, we will see an epidemic of that kind of behaviour. It is putting young people's lives at risk: young women's lives, when they get involved with partners, and young men's lives, because they will end up in prison for serious offences.

Ms Ferguson: According to that research report, at the end of October 2025, there were 97 ongoing non-fatal strangulation cases in the Crown Court and 263 in the Youth Court and the Magistrates' Court. What engagement, if any, have you, Minister, had to date with the Minister of Education about the development of a targeted educational piece for young people on non-consensual strangulation?

Mrs Long: I have engaged with the Education Minister on child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation but not specifically on targeted advertising around non-fatal strangulation. Part of the issue is about the differing views that people have of how explicit our relationships and sexuality education should be.

If we have boys as young as 10 who are asking such questions of teachers, and if we have girls as young as 14 who are experiencing such behaviours, we need to intervene much sooner and have the conversations with them, not to strip them of their innocence but to protect them from those who are already being corrupted by what they see online on those quite extreme pornographic websites.

Young people need to be equipped with information so that they know that it is not normal behaviour. It is not expected behaviour but abusive and dangerous behaviour, and that message needs to be communicated clearly to young people in an age-appropriate way, recognising that such sites are increasingly available and visible to children as young as 10.

Mr Speaker: That concludes the time for listed questions. We move on to topical questions.

Mrs Long: Yes.

Mr McGlone: Thank you for that answer. To clarify, because you referred to it earlier, do you feel that some barristers are getting pithy pay? As well as the victims of crime and others, we want to look after them. Is it your feeling that, on its conclusion, that engagement was a positive one?

Mrs Long: I met the criminal Bar last week. It was important that I did so, because, ultimately, the dispute is directly with the criminal Bar, as opposed to with the wider Bar Council. I felt that the engagement was constructive. I caveat that, however, by saying that my meeting with the previous chair of the criminal Bar on 5 November had also been deemed to be a constructive and positive engagement, on their part and mine. I therefore do not take for granted any outcome of that meeting. The criminal Bar now needs to liaise with its membership. It is ultimately a membership organisation. I want to give it the time and space to do that without further public interventions in order to allow it to see whether we can reach a conclusion to the dispute. We are also looking at things that were not part of that formal proposal but that, based on the conversations that we had on 5 November, I believe can be solved in a relatively short time, which would perhaps go some way to rebuilding trust on both sides following how the dispute has played out. That would be very welcome all round.

Mrs Long: Undoubtedly so.

Mrs Cameron: I thank the Minister for that clarification. What options for delivery of services are the Minister and her Department currently considering in order to deal with the withdrawal of services if the strike is not concluded swiftly?

Mrs Long: There are a number of things. First, I have not given up hope yet that it can be concluded sooner rather than later. It is important that one should not be overly hopeful but, rather, be sensible about it. It can be done. With goodwill on both sides, we can get to where we need to be in a relatively short time, but that depends on people showing willing.

We need to look at two things. One is the short-term measures on mitigations. A total of 13 cases have been assessed by people who are experts in supporting victims and witnesses and understand the cases. Those cases have been identified for a derogation from the strike. We are asking the Bar to proceed with those 13 cases. They are already in progress, so it makes sense that they be able to progress to a conclusion. They involve high-risk and vulnerable victims. So far, there has been agreement on only one of those cases, but I understand that conversations are ongoing between the PPS and the Bar about some of the other cases. That is one thing that we can do.

In the longer term, we need to look at the issue, because this is not the first time that we have had a strike by the criminal Bar. We cannot have the justice system essentially being held hostage periodically as a result of disputes. We can do better on issues such as regular reviews, fee levels and regular engagement, and I have undertaken to do so, but we also need to look at alternative delivery of service, which will be put on the longer finger. Nevertheless, it still needs to be looked at.

Mrs Long: There is a plan, as part of the legislation that we will introduce, for a judge to be able to put stalking protection orders in place either at the point of conviction or on acquittal, where the judge believes that the person, not having been convicted, still represents a risk to the complainant. They can be useful, but we need to look at how they are applied. One reason why, as with things such as domestic abuse protection notices and orders, we want to get the arrangements for them right is so that they do not offer any false sense of security to victims, who may rely on them for their safety.

Ms Brownlee: I thank the Minister. Only four SPOs have been issued since 2023, which is horrific. The PSNI has relayed some of its frustrations with SPOs and the challenges that it has had in relation to training. What more can your Department do, potentially in collaboration with the PSNI and other statutory agencies, to encourage the use of SPOs and to ensure that they are being used effectively and efficiently for those who are at immediate risk?

Mrs Long: There is a role for the PSNI in training, and we are happy to provide people with the resources — the materials — that they may need to provide information to officers. The operationalisation aspect of how that would done would be a matter for the Chief Constable and the Policing Board.

When it comes to how the orders might be better used, the use of stalking protection orders by judges is one of the things that we are looking at. Use of the orders often becomes an onerous process for the PSNI that involves additional court proceedings, whereas, if the process can be as one with the original court proceedings, and the judge can reach a determination on the order, that may help to speed things up.

We are looking at a number of options to make the orders more effective. If they are properly deployed, they can be useful. They remove some of the pressure on individual victims to seek out a non-molestation order or something similar, and they allow that protection to be court-endorsed, which means that the person involved knows that breaching the order would be a serious matter in their future treatment in the courts.

There are things that we can do to improve use and roll-out and to raise awareness of the orders. A number of things that we brought forward in the previous mandate could be better used, but I recognise that the police have limited resources, and we are trying to cope with that, because it is a major challenge.

Mrs Long: I do not recognise the characterisation that the Member gave, and therefore, I am afraid, I am unable to shine any light on his question.

Mr Buckley: Minister, from policing to our courts to our prisons, public confidence in the Department of Justice is at an all-time low. Do you feel that you are still up to the job?

Mrs Long: If I ever felt that I was not up to the job, I would be the first person to step aside: let me be clear about that. The justice system is more important than any individual and certainly more important than the TikTok that you are preparing. It is really important, if people lack confidence in the justice system, for me to say this: if some of those who get up in the Chamber week on week and trail the justice system through the mud, ignoring the good work that is done daily by highly professional members of the judiciary, the legal profession, the Prison Service, the police and by all the other people who do it, would, in a more balanced way, spend more time shining a light on some of the positive things that happen, perhaps they could actually contribute to increasing confidence in the justice system.

Mrs Long: I originally got permission from the Executive to include the standard protected groups in Northern Ireland, meaning those to do with religion, sexual orientation, disability and race; those are already included. In response to evidence presented by Judge Marrinan and further evidence that has arisen over the past number of years from PSNI statistics around hate crime incidents, I wrote to Executive colleagues recently requesting permission, not to change the Bill and its intent or how those aggravators would be applied, but to add transgender as a further protected characteristic. I am still awaiting a formal response from the Executive, but I have had responses from three of the parties in the Executive, which have been positive. I have had no response or, indeed, queries from the remaining party, and, on that basis, the legislation is now being drafted with transgender included as one of the characteristics. However, that clause will obviously come before the Executive for consideration in due course, and we will see if there is any further objection at that time.

Mr Baker: Thank you, Minister, for your answer. Do you agree that there needs to be increased protection for transgender people who are subjected to hate crimes?

Mrs Long: Anybody who is subjected to a hate crime deserves to be protected, but, further than that, there has to be recognition that there are secondary and tertiary victims of any crime. That is particularly acute in marginalised communities, where people may feel that the justice system is not responsive, or they may feel more vulnerable as a result of such attacks, and that is the purpose of hate crime legislation. It is not to create a hierarchy or a tiered system of victims, because we recognise that a broken nose is a broken nose and a broken arm is a broken arm, but if you have been targeted because of who you are inherently, it has a different impact on someone's psychology and on other people who identify with that person. I believe that all of us in the Chamber wish to see an end to such violent activity. Therefore, I see no reason why we would not include transgender individuals in the hate crime Bill, given the evidence from the PSNI about the rise in hate incidents targeting specifically those who are transgender — and also, I have to say, a significant rise on the basis of race.

Mr Brooks: I arrived during the supplementary questions to question 2, from the leader of the Opposition, so I apologise if there is any duplication in this.

Mrs Long: I said earlier that I did not really want to enter into a negotiation in public on this. Refresher fees are certainly a part of it. Actually, I think that that will be the bit that will be much more readily resolved. There is the issue of government legal services rates, which is something that was raised in the Chamber during the discussion that we had on the subject last week. They do not apply in the Crown Court in criminal cases. That is also something that has been raised, and we have said that, given the right evidence base, we are happy to look at that. There are a number of other issues, including an uplift to the fee structure that is there, but, again, that requires evidence to demonstrate that it is justifiable, affordable and necessary.

There are other issues that we are dealing with. For example, when cases go to the Court of Appeals, they go through a process of taxation where someone submits their bill to the taxing master and it is adjusted there. That is not a particularly transparent process. The Northern Ireland Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have raised issues about the lack of transparency, which is something that we want to reform. However, that is not part of the current discussion. I am looking for things that I believe we can expedite and that are already on the agreed road map that we all sat down and agreed in December. If we can expedite some of those to get the CBA back into court to give full service, the other issues will be dealt with in due course. It has not damaged the Solicitors' Criminal Bar Association in the slightest that it has continued to provide services to its clients throughout the dispute. In fact, because it has done that side by side with providing us with evidence, it has actually managed to get some wins across the line, whereas the CBA has not provided the evidence to allow us to do the same for it.

Mr Brooks: I thank the Minister for her response. I heard some exasperation in her voice when she described the past couple of meetings that she had had as having been constructive but probably without bearing fruit. At any stage in the future would she consider bringing in external mediation to try to move things along?

Mrs Long: The issue of mediation is one that, as the Member will know, has been discussed. It was suggested initially by the Lady Chief Justice, and it is something that I considered. I also took the view of Tom Burgess, who had been chairing the working group, as requested by the professions.

The bottom line is that, regardless of who the mediator is, the same problems will remain. At this stage, to almost go back to the beginning of a process and start mediation, to me, does not deal with the issue. Everyone has agreed as recently as 8 December that the working group is the right track and that the road map that has been set out is the right way forward. If there are disputes about how quickly some of that is accelerating, again, and without getting into the detail, I am happy to look at that, and, more than that, I am keen to look at that.

I think that there is a way forward. I do not want to say too much about it, because I want to give the CBA the opportunity to engage with its members. All I can say is that, if the CBA engages with me in good faith and with good will, we will resolve this quickly.

Mr Speaker: That brings to a conclusion questions to the Minister. Members should take their ease while we change the Table.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Ladies and gentlemen, the debate is now resumed. Minister, over to you, and you have 15 minutes.

Mr Nesbitt (The Minister of Health): Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you very much. I am very pleased to be engaged in a debate on this issue, because it is fundamental to try to deliver better outcomes for patients, service users and staff, and, indeed, to talk about the reset — the so-called shift left.

To start positively, I am pleased that all Members who contributed appeared to be agreeing with me and my analysis, which I came to after last year's additional winter pressures, that the problem is in community capacity. It is not in ED capacity; it is in community capacity. It is about the flow, and I am determined to address that flow by improving community capacity.

Mr McGrath said that he does not agree that it is going to take five years. I think that Mr McGuigan may have been in the same position. I will certainly take that back to the professionals who told me that it would take at least five years, and I will challenge them once again to justify their time frame. I read a report of Mr McGrath's in, I believe, 'Down News'. It was a terrible misrepresentation of the position, but be that as it may.

Let me briefly set out what we have observed over the recent period. Flu rates peaked early this season and then began to fall across all age groups leading into the Christmas period. That had an impact on our ability to work in ED. Despite that, there were reductions in the number of patients in ED awaiting admission and the number waiting over 12 hours once admitted in the run-up to Christmas and immediately after that. Ambulance arrivals exceeded the forecast between 24 and 30 December. Handover delays over two hours fell significantly from 23 to 27 December, but then they did rise again at month's end. All trusts worked to increase discharges in advance of Christmas Day to maximise bed capacity. On Christmas Eve alone, trusts achieved 646 discharges versus 357 admissions — tangible evidence that targeted operational actions can enhance flow when they are properly planned and coordinated. Those facts matter not just because they demonstrate effort and impact but because they highlight the interplay of demand, capacity and flow.

Additional winter pressures are symptoms of whole-system dynamics. I noticed some Members talking about winter pressures. As of last year's experience, I am of the opinion that the pressures on EDs are 365 days a year. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to talk of "additional" winter pressures.

Attendances at EDs are influenced by urgent care alternatives, community pathways, primary care access and public health behaviours. Admissions depend on clinical decisions and alternatives such as same-day emergency care. On that basis, I point out that we have repurposed £10 million to try to deal with those pressures. That money has gone to enhancing Hospital at Home and providing more short-stay inpatient beds and more frailty assessments. In the "big discussion" that led to the plan, I really focused on frailty and care for the elderly. I believe that, given our growing and increasingly elderly population, if we can crack how we deliver care for the elderly, we will be a long way towards the reform that I would like to see. The £10 million was also spent on increasing ambulatory pathways, not least in cardiology and respiratory services, and early reviews.

The ambulance handovers reflect ED congestion, inpatient bed availability and the speed with which patients move through acute care. Recognising that, we adopted the whole-system approach. The big discussion workshops, led by our Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Medical Officer, brought together stakeholders from across Health and Social Care (HSC) to examine pressures and co-design practical responses. On the big discussion workshops, I note that Mr Donnelly attributes to me a degree of cynicism. It seems to me that he was implying that it was almost a political move. I simply say to him that, if he is going to accuse the Chief Nursing Officer and the Chief Medical Officer of allowing me to manipulate them for political purposes, I would like advance notice of that meeting, because I could sell tickets for it.

Our overarching plan stresses practical prevention measures such as the vaccination programmes. Community pharmacies are stepping forward through Pharmacy First, and we have public campaigns such as Living Well and "Stay well this winter". I know that Members said that vaccination rates amongst HSC staff are not particularly brilliant, and I do not disagree with that, but they are a lot better than they were last year. That improvement needs to be acknowledged, along with the fact that we are far from there yet.

General practice has scaled capacity through additional sessions and support for residents in care homes, including through medical care plans. Hospitals retain the capability to open additional beds. The regional coordination centre supports the trusts and the Ambulance Service to manage the pressures. I have visited it, and, if the Committee has not done so, I certainly commend a visit to Knockbracken.

I know that Members want to see faster progress on ambulance handovers, the reduction in waiting times at EDs, the removal of corridor care and effective hospital discharge, and so do I. That is why the trusts have been asked to focus investment and effort where they yield the greatest demonstrable impact: redirection to alternative pathways, hospital flow and handover improvements at EDs. We are already seeing improvements in some of the metrics compared with last year. We have seen a reduction in the number of 12-hour delays. In the Belfast Trust, there has been a 12·5% reduction in the year to date. The Northern Trust achieved an 8·5% reduction in December, and the Western Trust achieved an 8% reduction in December. In the Belfast Trust, there were over 800 fewer delays over two hours, and the Western Trust continues to have the best ambulance handover performance. We must hold those gains and recognise and applaud them, while, of course, building on them throughout the rest of the year.

That brings me to winter 2026. As I stand here today reflecting on the current position, I reiterate that planning for winter is a year-round process. However, publication of my intentions and expectations ahead of winter 2026-27 will be made available by the summer. I will set out priorities and expectations, focusing on distinguishing between what is unique about the pressures in winter compared with those year-round. It is important that we understand what we can and cannot predict and plan for ahead of winter. That will be followed by the publication of the trusts' winter delivery plans, which I want to see by the end of September. The trusts' plans will provide the detailed actions that will be taken to provide operational resilience throughout the anticipated extreme operating context of the winter months. I sense that we need to do more to communicate how those plans work and the interplay between them. I sense that some think that the Department's plan is it, full stop and end of story. There is a lack of understanding — that is on us — about the fact that the trusts publish the operational plans. I believe that the Department's plan should be a framework from which the operational plans flow.

Mr McGrath: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Nesbitt: If I have time, I will, but I have a lot to get through. Members raised a lot of issues, and I want to return to them, not least those raised by Mr Gaston.

Winter weather can bring about an increase in falls, and that is why we are looking at frailty. No single lever will remove a winter peak or erase a queue at an ED, but what we can do, and are doing, is shape demand intelligently by directing patients to the right care at the right time; strengthening community and primary care in line with the shift-left agenda; reducing avoidable attendances and admissions; improving internal hospital flow; and accelerating safe, timely discharges. That is the work of stabilising the system while we pursue longer-term reforms.

I acknowledge the fact that the Committee Chair and Deputy Chair attended an ED on a Sunday evening. It is the same ED that I have attended in the past number of weeks — Antrim Area Hospital's emergency department — but I attended it in the morning. There were two patients in the reception area, and, on the far side, most of the cubicles were empty. There was no pressure whatsoever that morning. That morning was 25 December. We all know that we cannot replicate that on 25 January, but it says something to me about the demand side of the equation. We have not mentioned the demand side once in the debate. It has all been about the capacity. If we focus only on capacity, we will always have to come to the conclusion that capacity will never meet demand, even with a budget of £8·4 billion. Therefore, in 2026, the Department of Health will try to put a focus on managing demand, because it seems that that can be done. It certainly needs to be tried. There will be a focus on helping people to stay well and preventing the need for hospital admission.

Our ongoing vaccination programmes remain the best possible protection from infectious diseases, despite what some Members believe. Workforce vaccination recognises that protecting staff means that you protect patients and sustain services, so I welcome the commitment to the vaccination programme, which was evidenced in the higher uptake in 2025-26. The total number of HSC-employed staff who received the flu vaccine in the current programme is 21,698 from a total eligible cohort of 75,028 people, representing an uptake of 28·92%, which is lower than I would wish. That is the target to improve next year. It will also be important to reach parts of the workforce that, historically, have had a lower uptake, so we will listen to staff, address their questions and try to remove logistical barriers. We will continue to work with the Public Health Agency to implement improvements for 2026-27.

To address increased admissions and longer stays, we will centre efforts on managing flow and discharge into the community and on helping people to stay at home, where possible, while receiving the treatment that they need. It is crucial that people are treated in the right place at the right time. We have learned from previous years that targeted discharge campaigns can create capacity, but they have to be sustained and connected to downstream community and care home services. We also learned that real-time data on attendances, admissions, discharges and handovers enables action when coupled with clear escalation protocols and empowered local leadership.

I will also briefly address the role of the public. We have asked people, and will continue to ask them, to get vaccinated when eligible; use urgent care alternatives where appropriate; attend scheduled appointments or provide timely notice if they cannot do so; and cooperate with discharge processes. I know that those are not small requests, but they are asks that recognise a shared responsibility to keep services available for those who need them most.

I ask Members to be careful and thoughtful with their language. Mr Robinson said that EDs were "totally gridlocked".

The dictionary definition and common understanding of the word "gridlock" are that nothing is moving. That is not the case in our emergency departments, although things move far too slowly. That is an incredibly important distinction for somebody who may, as we speak, be thinking of attending an ED. If there were gridlock, there would certainly be no point in doing that, but that is not the case.

Mr Gaston was critical of a reply from the Department to an Assembly question for written answer (AQW). It is a two-page reply. I reviewed it over the break and can say that it does not lack detail. Regarding what he said about category 2 responses, the Ambulance Service — he knows this, because he has had the response — has agreed with staff-side representatives a formal escalation process for defined, time-sensitive category 2 incidents and specific time-critical inter-hospital transfers. Such incidents may be responded to during periods of lawful action short of strike and in the final hour of shift, where direct conveyance to a point of care is appropriate.

Mr Gaston also complained about the Department's lack of speed in responding to questions for written answer. So far this month, the Executive Office and the Department of Justice have responded to 49 AQWs: the lowest of any Department. In the same period, the Department of Health has responded to 251 AQWs. In fact, as we approach the second anniversary of the restoration of the Assembly, the Department of Health has answered over 8,000 AQWs. We have no additional staff or resource, compared with the Executive Office or the Department of Justice, to respond to five times the number of queries.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you, Minister. I call Gerry Carroll to wind on the amendment. Gerry, you have five minutes.

Mr Carroll: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Thank you to everybody who contributed to the debate. I will run through some of the comments that were made and will close with my own comments.

It was a wide-ranging debate in which most Members recognised the problems in the sector. There was an element of papering over the cracks, but, for the most part, most parties and Members painted a realistic but grim picture of the state that, unfortunately, our health sector is in. Philip McGuigan, the Chair of the Health Committee, talked about system failure. He mentioned people waiting a long time on hard chairs in waiting rooms, which created an image of the scale of the crisis.

Other Members mentioned the fact that, contrary to what the Minister has just said, EDs in particular are laden with people who are struggling to be seen in a timely manner. I do not understand the logic of the argument that, because only two people were in EDs on Christmas Day, there is no crisis. I am happy to give way, if the Minister wishes to elaborate on that.

Mr Nesbitt: I was not saying that there is no crisis; I was trying to illustrate the fact that we need to look at demand and its causes.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): The Member has an extra minute.

Mr Carroll: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. We also need to be careful about sending out a message directly or indirectly that, if someone is unwell and has been advised to go to the ED or has nowhere else to go to, they should not go. That would be a dangerous argument to put out there, whether intentionally or inadvertently.

Alan Chambers talked about some of the pressures in the sector — in EDs in particular — and said that healthcare workers deserved more than just praise. He went on, however, to defend the Minister and attack the Alliance Party. It is certainly not my job to defend the Alliance Party, but some might say that that was unfair of him. I will leave it to others to determine that. Mr Chambers called my amendment "reckless". I was almost speechless but, unsurprisingly, not quite speechless; Members will, no doubt, be glad to hear that. It is worth remembering that, last September, a similar amendment in my name was passed — in fairness, I do not think that the UUP backed it — that sought to end the huge public spending on private healthcare. That amendment was not described as "reckless" then, and —.

Mr McGuigan: I thank the Member for allowing me to come in. The amendment calls for a commitment to stop spending on private healthcare. The Member mentioned a decision taken previously by the Assembly. When I talked about the need for an all-Ireland health service, I envisaged it being free at the point of delivery with public access. Does the Member agree that the priority for citizens in the North must be reducing waiting lists? Does he also agree that, when it comes to building a workforce that is capable of providing the public service that he and I want to see, we must use all the levers in our hands to reduce waiting lists, get people off waiting lists and give them good patient outcomes?

Mr Carroll: I thank the Member. I certainly agree about an all-Ireland health service. As a party, we have pushed for that for quite a while. People want to be treated as quickly as possible and should be, and, for the most part, that can be done publicly. I will come on to that in a bit more detail.

I will move swiftly on. The Member for Upper Bann said that she would not vote for the amendment because we need a private health sector: I categorically disagree. We do not. We need its workers, beds and facilities. They should come under the direction of the trusts and the NHS more generally. To me, what she said suggests that the Member for Upper Bann does not have any faith in the publicly run health model, which she should. [Inaudible.]

Mr Carroll: That is kind of what you are saying. The only reason why the Member and others think that we need the private health sector is that the NHS has been defunded, underfunded and stripped of funding. Every doctor, nurse, auxiliary or porter recruited to the private sector is one less doctor, nurse, auxiliary or porter in the NHS. The two are absolutely connected. We need to deal with a problem that is staring people right in the face.

Members shared personal stories. Linda Dillon mentioned her father, and I wish him well with his health issues. Daniel McCrossan mentioned his mother. Theirs were heartfelt stories. Danny Donnelly talked about eradicating corridor care, and I fundamentally agree. Rather than minimising or reducing it, we need to look at eradicating it.

When we talk about revenue raising in a general sense, water charges, prescription charges or higher student fees are usually referred to, but there is a solution staring Members right in the face that they are not willing to look at: ending the waste of privatisation. We are publicly funding a private health sector that is about maximising profit and, in many cases, picking up the easier procedures and leaving the more complex ones to the NHS. That is unfair and unsustainable, and people should not endorse it.

We often hear in the Chamber and elsewhere in the Building that we should listen to the experts. I do not claim to be an expert in much, but contributors to 'The Lancet' certainly have more expertise than me and many in the Assembly. In 2024, an article in it stated:

It reviewed eight high-income countries where privatisation has taken place. Listen to that, Members, if you do not want to listen to me. I hope that you will back my amendment.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): I call Nuala McAllister to make a winding-up speech on the motion. Nuala, you have 10 minutes.

Miss McAllister: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank Members and the Minister for taking time to contribute to the debate.

I hope that lessons can be learned from all the drama and concern about winter preparedness last October. I say that because there were many concerns. My colleague Danny, in proposing the motion, outlined the time frame — it was critical that he did that — and talked about where we got to last October and why. The Minister published an overarching plan on the day of a Health Committee session, with Committee members having been told two days prior that no materials or documents would be provided. That caused unnecessary chaos among the public and in private. I highlight that because of confidence issues. We need to be sure that our healthcare workers and staff can be confident in the health service leadership and know that it is delivering for them and their patients.

I will speak about some of the issues that many in the Chamber have highlighted today. I will start with the serious flu surge. The Minister was absolutely right to highlight the fact that the surge arrived earlier than usual this winter, with cases peaking at 1,227 during the week ending 7 December. Hospital admissions were at 346 the following week, and the surge resulted in school attendance being severely impacted on, owing to the prevalence of flu among children. There was a positivity rate of 54·2% among those aged five to 14 during the last week of November. A consultant from the Children's Hospital went on record to state:

The surge of such a serious strain at a much earlier stage is proof that winter preparedness is crucial at an earlier time and that the health service should be able to cope with increasing pressures. I note that the flu vaccine uptake has increased, but it is simply not good enough. I agree with the Minister that everyone can play their part by getting vaccinated, and I encourage that.

It is also important to highlight the flu vaccine roll-out in our schools. As of December, there were still schools across Northern Ireland where children had not received their flu vaccine. For the first time, the winter preparedness plan had a focus on paediatric healthcare. That is important, not just because my children ended up in A&E but because many of my constituents bring up the issue of children's healthcare, which is perhaps not talked about enough in the Assembly Chamber. The flu vaccine was a good initiative from the Department and the trusts, and I hope that we will see it expanded this year.

The most common examples of A&E waiting times from the Public Health Agency (PHA) show waits of almost 13 hours in Altnagelvin Area Hospital, as a number of other Members have highlighted, and 7·5 hours in Antrim Area Hospital on 10 December. Unfortunately, the consequences of the waits are infamous, and many in the Chamber have mentioned corridor care and queues of ambulances outside EDs that are unable to admit patients, leaving the ambulances unable to respond to emergency calls. I will mention some of the stats that Members mentioned. Many Members talked about nine ambulances waiting outside EDs, others mentioned 10 ambulances waiting and four-day waits for ward beds. We had others highlight five-day waits in their local emergency department. Linda Dillon highlighted the case of a constituent who waited for seven hours in the street for an ambulance. We also heard that the Royal College of Emergency Medicine's (RCEM) report states that 1,400 deaths are associated with long waits.

The threshold for long waits that impact on mortality is 12 hours. When you have a 12-hour wait, there is, I believe, a 20% greater chance of mortality. The figures may vary a little on either side, but any increase in the mortality rate because of a long wait is wrong. We also heard that, at one point, there were 650 patients ready for discharge. The Minister commented on the public discharge campaign: I agree that there has to be a campaign about public discharge, but the likes of Carers NI have also highlighted that we cannot put the blame on families and put the emphasis on them to take their loved ones out of hospital. If the families cannot cope and do not have the skills to look after their loved ones, we cannot inflict further pain on them.

Mrs Dillon: Will the Member give way?

Miss McAllister: Sure.

Mrs Dillon: Does the Member agree that it is good to hear about the reduction in ambulance handover times in some trusts? I am concerned that the Southern Trust is not mentioned in those figures. The Committee needs to understand what has led to those reductions and why they cannot be replicated across all the trusts or whether they have happened at the expense of carers at home. We need to understand whether it is a good news story and how it can be replicated elsewhere.

Miss McAllister: I absolutely agree. The statistics are important for us to learn from what went well and how it can be replicated. I will touch on that further.

I will talk about some of the other contributions. It was important that the timeline of events in the proposal was highlighted on the Floor. We are urging the Minister to act earlier, not just because of the "What" and "When", but, as Diane Dodds said, it is about what is actually contained in the proposal. I agree with the Member that the addition of what the winter preparedness plan contains would strengthen the motion. Who it is developed with? It must be the people on the front line.

We entirely agree with the sentiment of the amendment tabled by People Before Profit, because we should not have privatised healthcare. The NHS should be free at the point of access for all from the cradle to the grave, but we must be realistic if we are to target waiting lists now. We cannot, in good conscience, withdraw from the independent sector; it would not be right for our constituents. Colin and Philip spoke about privacy and dignity, and it is important to reflect on that when our constituents wait in A&Es, particularly in Altnagelvin, where they share one toilet and there is no private space for families.

I also heard many Members across the Chamber speak about three-, four- and five-day waits. We talk about it like it is the norm, but none of us accepts it. We need it to change, and we need the change to be permanent.

I also want to speak about a few comments that were made by the UUP Member. It is the same speech. It is almost a single transferable speech that we hear, no matter what health motion comes before us in the Chamber. Yes, the Chamber and the Health Committee are for scrutiny, and it is important to highlight and scrutinise where possible, and we will recognise where there have been improvements. However, the UUP has to recognise that it has held the portfolio for eight years. For two of those years, the Assembly was collapsed, so we can excuse it for that part. However, when it comes to true transformation of the health service, there is no lack of willingness from the Alliance Party to engage, but the UUP is the party that stands outside with others opposing transformation and even the slightest changes when it comes to our health service. Therefore, I will not take any lectures on that issue. We will stand here every single day to raise the issues of winter preparedness and waiting lists, whether for breast cancer or gynaecological cancers, because we need to. If we take our eye off the ball, the ball, as history has shown, will try to hide. We need the change to happen permanently.

Before I finish, I will move on quickly to some points that the Minister made today. One of the great successes of the past few years has been ambulatory care. It has been fantastic in taking the weight off EDs and inpatient stays. If that can be increased, that will be absolutely fantastic, but we must increase domiciliary care. It is disappointing that the Minister did not highlight or respond to the comments made by the Chair of the Committee regarding the many independent domiciliary care providers who have said that they are willing to step in and help. We have had absolutely no response to that.

I want to focus on the fact that the Minister said that there was a lack of understanding, but there is no lack of understanding from any Member who sits on the Health Committee. I can tell you that for sure. We know that the trusts are responsible for the operation and delivery of the services, but, as Minister in the Department, it is your role and up to your leadership to make the change for good and to deliver a health service for everyone, no matter the time of year.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Ladies and gentlemen, take your ease before the next motion.

Mr Wilson: I beg to move

Mr Speaker: The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour and 30 minutes for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes to propose and 10 minutes to make a winding-up speech. All other contributors will have five minutes.

This is Gareth Wilson's first opportunity to speak as a private Member, so I remind the Assembly that it is the convention that a maiden or Member's inaugural speech be made without interruption. However, should the Member choose to express views that would provoke an interruption, he is likely to forfeit that protection. I call Gareth Wilson.

Some Members: Hear, hear.

Mr Wilson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to propose the motion. Before I address the motion, I thank Members sincerely for their warm and kind words as I took my seat in the Chamber last week; it was much appreciated. Indeed, many people took the time to greet me in the corridors of the Building. I thank Members from across the House for their warmth and kindness.

This is my first opportunity in the Chamber to put on record my gratitude for and appreciation of William Irwin, who recently stepped down from his role as the DUP's Newry and Armagh Assemblyman. It was a role that he exercised with considerable success, sincerity and devotion for almost 19 years. It was an absolute pleasure to serve as his assistant for the entirety of his tenure as a Member of the House. He was a very enthusiastic advocate for all the people of the constituency. The warm words that were expressed by Members of the House, many of which I listened to, during his last week in office, were especially kind. I pass on his thanks again to Members for their sentiments. The old adage that all political careers end in failure is certainly not applicable to William. I wish him well in his well-deserved retirement, although he would want me to add that he is certainly not one for sitting down.

From my personal perspective, as I take up my role as an Assembly Member for Newry and Armagh, I want, first and foremost, to thank God for the health and strength to pursue the role. I thank my wife, my family, my friends and my former Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon (ABC) Borough Council colleagues for their support. I also thank the DUP MLA team for their significant warmth and kindness as I have undertaken this journey.

Having served for over 20 years in local government, formerly as part of the then Armagh City and District Council, and latterly in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, including a very enjoyable term as lord mayor, I have a strong enthusiasm and determination to deliver change and, crucially, deliver assistance to the people of Newry and Armagh. Indeed, I want to elevate that level of intervention and interaction for the benefit of the people through my new public representational role in the Northern Ireland Assembly. I put on record my thanks to the public who have reached out with the warmest of messages to me. It really is appreciated, and I read and listened to every one.

I am a straight-talking unionist, and I will be an advocate for the Union. Through my work in the House and in the constituency, I will promote the benefits of the Union and reflect the views of the unionist electorate in the constituency. I will also commit to putting my shoulder to the wheel with my fellow unionists in addressing the overbearing and undemocratic protocol, which continues to cause great concern amongst our industries and our communities. However, I want to say that my unionism is forward-looking. My unionism will not prevent me from reaching out across the divides and ensuring that everyone in the constituency, regardless of their political, religious or cultural backgrounds, will be able to contact me and seek assistance, as, indeed, they do currently and have done throughout my years as a public representative.

There is much work to do in my constituency, and I will continue to be an advocate for our elderly and for those in the constituency who are vulnerable. I will continue to be accessible and visible as I pursue improvements for everyone in Newry and Armagh. The issues that require attention in the constituency remain the importance of securing movement on the progression of the much-needed link roads in Armagh to reduce congestion and improve air quality in the city; and the importance of investing in and the protection of our health and social care system in the constituency at all our busy NHS sites, including at Daisy Hill Hospital. There is, of course, a renewed importance attached to road safety, given recent fatalities and very serious accidents on the A27, the A28 and the A3 main routes in the Newry and Armagh constituency. Our hard-pressed businesses also require to be listened to on the cost of doing business, their rates, their town centres and their services.

I was appointed to the Committee for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs last week, and I truly look forward to that role. I very much enjoyed my first meeting of the Committee last Thursday, along with my party colleagues Michelle and Tom and, indeed, fellow MLAs from across the parties. Our rural communities and our farmers in Newry and Armagh will have a voice. That was the case under William Irwin's tenure, and it will be the case under mine.

Mr Speaker, acknowledging your leniency and not intending to stretch it any further, I now turn to the motion before the House. The sentiment of the motion is one of accountability and respect for the rule of law, which the Minister herself must surely be bound by. As someone who spent 10 years on ABC Borough Council's planning committee, serving twice as chairman, I know that the issue of advertising hoardings was a regular theme in applications. Applications that came before the planning committee received significant scrutiny. Indeed, the Minister's Department is a consultee for every planning application that comes across the local council's threshold. Therefore, if the Camlough Road billboard that has borne Sinn Féin's political messaging had been subject to due process, the Minister's Department would, undoubtedly, have responded with a negative consultation response.

What is more concerning from a planning perspective is the fact that the Egyptian Arch is a B+ listed structure, as confirmed to me this morning by historic environment division. That listing, in itself, should create significant restrictions for developments close by — if, of course, due process is followed; it clearly has been followed not in this instance. I recall a number of applications at ABC Borough Council's planning committee in which planning permission was being sought close to listed structures and the consultee response from historic environment division clearly pointed to a detrimental impact on the structure, with the planners recommending refusal of the applications. Those applicants had to abide by the law. Minister, by your lack of action, you are saying that it is one rule for Sinn Féin and another rule for Newry businesses.

The public are not fools. They can see a blatant disregard for policy and for the rule of law. The fact that it is visible in a Minister with responsibility for planning and, indeed, our road verges is a significant concern. I know that our councils regularly pursue those who fly-post and that, from a planning enforcement perspective, they routinely issue notices for immediate rectification of breaches. What is the response in this instance? That is the question, Members, that needs to be answered.

I have had sight of a letter that the Minister sent to the Committee for Infrastructure, and it raises many more questions than it answers. My colleagues will touch on the content of that letter, however it seems strange that the Minister appears to make up policy on the hoof. Indeed, it appears that the only concern seems to be with whether the installation is a safety hazard. That is not policy in action; that is blatant disregard for policy and an apparent abdication of responsibility. The Minister went on to state that, on two occasions, her Department has issued requests for the installation to be removed, but she does not say who those communications were sent to. Clarity is needed on whether the Minister's Department has been writing back to the Minister herself. Sinn Féin may be used to talking to spooks, but ghostwriting to itself hardly amounts to accountability on this matter.

The Minister's position is especially concerning, given that that illegal sign remains in place in Newry. It is a point worth noting that a very important, large traffic-direction DFI road sign, providing key information on the location of Craigavon Area Hospital's A&E, remains unreadable, lying on its face in the verge on Northway, Portadown. I imagine that the Minister passes that sign daily. I raised that issue with her Department's representatives when DFI presented its annual report to ABC Borough Council only a matter of weeks ago. I was present at that meeting, and, despite an assurance from a senior official that the matter would resolved, many weeks later, the sign remained face down this morning and not fit for purpose.

The Minister's party political and illegal signage is clearly more important than her departmental responsibilities to ensure that a sign that shows where an emergency department is located is visible for someone who might be unfamiliar with the territory and find themselves in an emergency.

The motion draws a comparison between this instance and how statutory agencies treat businesses or individuals who erect unauthorised advertising. They would be pursued relentlessly, yet here we have a most unacceptable instance, where a Sinn Féin Minister disregards the rule of law. I believe that, in doing so, she breaches the ministerial code. I urge her to immediately instruct her Department to remove the displays without further delay and restore some public trust in the strict systems that should govern the location of advertising materials, as they do in all other circumstances. Sinn Féin is not above the law.

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Wilson: I commend the motion.

Mr Boylan: I welcome the Member to the Chamber, and I look forward to working with him.

In the midst of all the important and pressing issues that face us as a society locally, nationally and internationally, we are spending time in the Assembly debating a motion about a billboard: frankly, it is bizarre. Of course, everyone should follow proper planning procedures, but the time that has been spent on discussion and faux outrage at the Infrastructure Committee is nothing short of ridiculous, and we will probably see more of it today.

If the Members who tabled the motion are serious about illegal displays, let us have a conversation about such displays, particularly the annual, toxic, hate-filled and illegal bonfires that blight our communities.

Mr Gaston: Will the Member give way?

Mr Boylan: Of course, the motion is not about that.

Mr Gaston: Will the Member give way?

Mr Boylan: It is all about party politicking and petty point-scoring, rather than any genuine attempt to discuss the real, serious issues. The public will see the motion for what it is: the singular obsession of the SDLP Member for Newry and Armagh, who is being egged on enthusiastically by unionist representatives. Perhaps the real focus on the billboard is on the message, "A United Ireland is for everyone", and I think that —

Mr Buckley: Will the Member give way?

Mr Speaker: Order.

Mr Boylan: — that key message is what is bugging most of the people in the Chamber.

Hopefully, after today, the hot air will dissipate, and we can get back to focusing on the real issues that impact on ordinary workers and families in their day-to-day lives. Sinn Féin will, of course, oppose the motion.

Mr McMurray: Following Mr Wilson's maiden speech, I welcome him to the Chamber.

The subject matter of the motion has been raised at the Committee for Infrastructure intermittently now for the past number of months. While I thank Mr Martin, Chair of the Infrastructure Committee, for tabling the motion, I cast my mind back to one of his utterances about not wanting to make the matter a political football. In rugby parlance, the garryowen has been launched to test the opposition full back, and, in football terms, the high ball has gone in to the full forward. Everyone is hoping for a clean catch at best or a lucky bounce at worst.

The matter is both serious and trivial. It is serious in that it is a matter of law and policy and to breach those things is serious. Furthermore, matters of cultural, political and constitutional expression are constants that many in our society hold dear, and I do not want to belittle those things. However, we could be talking about roads, planning, waste water infrastructure, flooding or climate change, all of which are serious issues for the Infrastructure Department. Instead, we are talking about a billboard at the Egyptian Arch in Newry. When the issue is stacked against some of those other topics, it is not hard to find it somewhat trivial.

I acknowledge that a matter such as this garners greater scrutiny when the Minister's Department holds the remit for certain aspects: planning, land and railways. I also know that the DUP would like to have the matter debated as a single-ticket item: an opportunity for a proxy culture skirmish as well as an attempt to create space between it and its partners in the Executive. However, the scrutiny must go right across Northern Ireland in relation to the erection of paraphernalia on public property.

There are nuances to the motion, but, in its genesis, it is simple: is prior consent required from the relevant statutory authority before something is publicly erected? It is that simple. The law is clear that permission is required before the erection of any form of advertising. I had cause to drive past the billboard in question the other day: it is quite the size and quite the structure. On seeing its size and location, a layperson would conclude that planning permission would be required for something like that, but, in this instance and many others, it has not been sought. Communication and answers on the matter have been sought from the Department and the Minister via the Infrastructure Committee. However, to put it at its most generous, the responses received have not been overly transparent or conclusive.

I have no problem with the issue that is currently highlighted on the billboard: it is a Christmas message to the children of Palestine. Previously, it was a call for a united Ireland that bore a Sinn Féin logo. It has also been adjusted by a satirist who wished to express support for Northern Ireland. You would need to have a bit of a sense of humour. I have quite a high tolerance for political and cultural messaging. For me, toleration is integral to a pluralistic liberal democracy. However, when the countryside is saturated with subtle political messaging all year round, even my tolerance can be exceeded.

The key question is whether we, as a society, should continue to allow things to be displayed in a public space without having gone through a defined process. That applies equally, whether the object in question is a Sinn Féin billboard, a "Go slow" sign with political branding, a sign saying, "No Irish Sea border" or the flag of whichever constitutional jurisdiction you hold dear. The motion mentions that the failure to remove the billboard is contrary to how other businesses and individuals are treated, and I cannot disagree. Every year, without fail, I and, I am sure, many others will be contacted about the erection of flags on lamp posts. Coincidentally, lamp posts are also property for which the Minister for Infrastructure has some remit.

I have cycled the land border. It took me three and a half days to do so. Along the way, I lost count of the overt expressions of political aspiration. That is the way of this country.

Mr Buckley: I thank the Member for giving way. I agree with him: the debate is not about the particular political messaging on the billboard. Does he accept that the debate is about the size, scale and location of the billboard and the glaring hypocrisy of the party of the Minister in control, which seems to have some association with it? Whether that is ownership, we still have not found out.

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr McMurray: I agree that that is an aspect of it. However, in Northern Ireland, nothing is ever simple, and it points to wider issues at hand. The issues of ownership, public property and permission are all tied into the debate.

Mr Clarke: Get off the fence.

Mr McMurray: Sorry?

Mr Clarke: Get off the fence.

Mr McMurray: Anyway. We cannot dodge the fact that there is no process. Where there is no process, there is misunderstanding. That is a common thread through this. My colleague Ms Bradshaw has long advocated for and will introduce legislation on the display of flags and emblems. What that calls for is not complicated. What Ms Bradshaw, the Alliance Party and many people in Northern Ireland are calling for is clarity through legislation. Clarity will bring consistency and a plan for dealing with displays where the required process has not been followed.

Ms Bradshaw: I thank the Member for giving way. Hopefully, my legislation, when I bring it forward, will provide clarity. Does the Member agree that, in the absence of that clarity, there should not be a structure in place for which permission has not been given?

Mr McMurray: I totally agree with the Member. [Inaudible.]

Mr McMurray: Does the Member want to intervene as well?

Mr Clarke: I thought that you [Inaudible.]

Mr McMurray: OK. Dead on.

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr McMurray: I want to live in a society in which we have tolerance for those —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr McMurray: — who may have a different cultural — sorry, Speaker?

Mr Speaker: Your time is up.

Mr McMurray: Dead on.

Mr McNulty: I came to speak on the motion wondering, "Is this for real, or are we in the twilight zone?". I could approach the unbelievable reality from a position of righteous indignation — I would be justified in doing so — but it feels more like an episode of 'The Unbelievables', because it is just that: unbelievable.

I begin by unequivocally affirming my dedication to building a united Ireland for all — here, lads, it will take more than a billboard at the border to unite the island — and to speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Some of the messages on the illegal Sinn Féin billboards that the motion targets are not ones with which I disagree. I take issue, however, with illegal and potentially dangerous constructions that ignore the law and enforcement correspondence from a Department. By constructing and refusing to take down its illegal Egyptian Arch billboard, Sinn Féin demonstrates that it is willing to break the law and to continue to break the law with impunity. You cannot be doing that, lads. Why did Sinn Féin blank out the display on its illegal billboard during the Irish general election?

The Committee for Infrastructure, of which I am a member, has written to the Minister with several questions about Sinn Féin's illegal billboard at the Egyptian Arch. What permissions were sought from Translink in advance of constructing the illegal Sinn Féin billboard on Department for Infrastructure property within 50 metres of the main railway line on the island? What are the safety implications of that construction without the appropriate permission and of that same illegal Sinn Féin billboard's remaining in situ near a busy road junction and railway line? You cannot be doing that, lads.

Who in Sinn Féin in Newry and Armagh received the enforcement correspondence from the Department seeking the removal of the illegal Sinn Féin billboard? Was it the Minister, who is responsible for that enforcement? The Minister has refused to answer the question, making one wonder who is in charge. Is the Minister answerable to the Committee for Infrastructure and the Assembly, or does she take orders from someplace else? You cannot be doing that, lads.

We asked the Minister what plans there are to remove the illegal Sinn Féin billboard. The Department has no plans to remove the illegal Sinn Féin billboard, and there are certainly no plans from Sinn Féin to remove its illegal billboard. You cannot be doing that, lads.

The Minister was asked how her Department had evaluated the billboard as being of low risk to public safety. She said that no formal assessment had been completed on the safety of the illegal Sinn Féin billboard. We are supposed to trust in the alleged safety of an illegally constructed billboard that has been built on a busy road junction beside a protected structure that is within 50 metres of the main railway line on the island on the basis of no evidence. There has been no formal assessment whatsoever. That is not how vital departmental decisions that impact on the safety of road and rail users should be made. You cannot be doing that, lads.

The Committee also asked who would be responsible in the event of the catastrophic failure of the illegal Sinn Féin billboard. Would it be the Department or Sinn Féin corporate? You cannot be doing that, lads. The non-responses that we received from the Minister completely sidestepped the vital issues of justice and safety and show contempt for and disrespect to the Committee for Infrastructure, the Assembly and the rule of law. You cannot be doing that, lads.

The lead party of government cannot impose its agenda irrespective of how it affects the whole democratic process. It is not unreasonable for people and communities to want to see parties and Ministers in charge abiding by and implementing the rule of law. The double standards and the precedent implications of the lead party of government's refusal to remove its illegal billboard are far-reaching, especially when you think about wee Mary, who is trying to put an extension on her house for her disabled son but has to jump through planning process and building control hoops; about Johnny in south Armagh, who cannot put an extension on his shed to grow his business because of planning enforcement; and about businesses in Newry that cannot put a wee sign on their shop because of overzealous planning enforcement. It is an uneven playing field. That is not how things should be. It undermines the credibility of political leaders. You cannot be doing that, lads.

South Armagh already has Sinn Féin corriboards of 6 feet by 4 feet in every gap in a hedge and at every road junction in every village and town in every community. They are littering our beautiful villages and towns and our wonderful countryside. You cannot be doing that, lads. I urge the Minister for Infrastructure and her Department to take seriously the issue of illegally erected Sinn Féin billboards. Such constructions have the potential to cause serious damage, and the appearance of giving leeway to one's own party to break the law has no place in a democracy. You cannot be doing that, lads.

Mr Stewart: How does one follow that contribution from the Member? I appreciate, however, that he made some valid points.

I welcome the new Member for Newry and Armagh to his place. I congratulate him on his maiden speech and pay tribute to his predecessor, who was a great ambassador for the constituency.

I agree with the Member opposite on one point at least. There are, undoubtedly, better things that we should be doing today, but I do not blame the proposer of the motion for tabling it. There is an easy resolution to the matter, and that is for the Minister and her party colleagues to get together to resolve to take down the illegal Sinn Féin billboards.

If I may make a few points, this has been discussed at length at the Committee, it has gone through two Ministers and, still, there is no resolution. We could be dealing with other things, and it is deeply frustrating that we are dedicating any time to the matter when there is an easy resolution. Let me be clear. Those signs are illegal. They breach planning regulations and pose a risk to road safety, yet they are all still up, and they remain up because, quite simply, they are Sinn Féin boards and because the Minister agrees with the message. She could have taken action; she could have actioned enforcement, but, sadly, that has not been done.

As other Members have said today, small businesses across our constituencies regularly pay the price for inadvertently breaching planning regulations. In my constituency, in Carrickfergus alone, one small business owner was threatened with a fine of £3,500, mainly because a sign slightly exceeded the signage limit on the building front in a conservation area. That is an example of someone trying to get by, doing their best, yet the Sinn Féin Minister who is in charge of planning regulations is allowing those illegally erected billboards to remain. It is simply unacceptable.

Minister, that is happening on your watch and happened on that of your predecessor. You are responsible for ensuring that the law is applied fairly and consistently. It is simply not good enough to stand by while illegal signage remains in place because of its political affiliation. Every day that those boards remain in place, they pose a risk to drivers, pedestrians and communities. As other Members have said, there are serious questions to be asked around public liability insurance. Who is responsible? The Department? The billboards are on land that you are responsible for as Minister. Or are those who erected them responsible? It is a valid question.

The second issue is around cost. Minister, you have already articulated in your response — or your party colleague did — and in your written ministerial statements that you have corresponded with those who erected the signs. I am interested to know who you are corresponding with and what that has cost the Department so far.

Simply, as other Members have done today, Minister, I call on you to get this matter sorted. Use the powers that you have in your Department to remove that illegal signage, enforce planning regulations without fear or favour and show that the law applies to everyone, no matter who you are or what party you represent.

Ms Ennis: I had not intended to speak in the debate, but I simply cannot sit here and allow this farce to trundle along any longer. It is, quite frankly, a farcical debate.

I am old enough to remember, because it was only last Tuesday, when Phillip Brett — I am glad that he has joined us in the Chamber — berated Sinn Féin for not using its time in the Chamber last week to introduce issues and talk about the "real issues", as he put it, affecting our constituents here in the North. To quote Mr Brett last week:

Without a single hint of irony, here we have the DUP today tabling a motion about a strip of corriboard with a Sinn Féin logo on it, which, by the way— this fact seems to have escaped many people in the Chamber today — is no longer there.

Regrettably, but unsurprisingly, Mr McNulty has chosen to follow the DUP in this ignominy. [Interruption.]

As my colleague Cathal Boylan said, if the Members opposite are truly and genuinely serious about tackling illegal structures, let us talk about the illegal displays at bonfires. Let us have an open and honest conversation about flags and illegal displays festooning lamp posts up and down the length of the North — but you are not serious about it. You want to cherry-pick the issue because it suits you.

It is not a serious motion; it is not. The motion is about electioneering. It is not a genuine attempt to tackle those issues in any meaningful way. If you want to have a serious and honest debate about it, we are up for it. We will have the debate, but we are not going to entertain cherry-picking one issue because it suits your political agenda. Do yourselves a favour: take your colleague Phillip Brett's advice from last week, and let us get back to talking about the real issues that people have sent us to the Chamber to talk about.

Mr Dunne: I, too, commend my colleague Gareth Wilson for his maiden speech and welcome him to his position as an MLA.

The motion is not about suppressing political opinion, nor is it about cultural expression or symbolism. It is about something far more important: respect for the rule of law, and also the duty on Ministers to uphold that law fairly, transparently and without fear or favour. Under the ministerial code of conduct, every Minister is required to:

to avoid conflicts between public duty and private or party interest, and to uphold the seven principles of public life. That means taking decisions solely in the public interest, resolving conflicts openly and being as transparent as possible about decisions and actions. In Newry, however, those principles appear to have been abandoned.

A permanent political billboard was unlawfully erected at the Egyptian Arch and surrounding locations without the consent of the landowner, which has been confirmed, without planning permission, which has been confirmed, and in clear breach of article 87 of the Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993. The Department for Infrastructure has confirmed that the structure is illegal. That confirmation is in black and white multiple times in correspondence and is publicly available. Officials have stated that those responsible were asked to remove it, but the billboard remains in place years later, as do a number of other billboards in close proximity. That failure to act —.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Member for giving way. Sinn Féin Members have made much of the issue's being trivial and not related to the people whom we represent. Does the Member agree that planning enforcement matters very much to people? In my area, the Newry, Mourne and Down planning enforcement team comes down on small businesses for their signage or a misplaced coffee cart. It comes down hard and shuts down businesses. It is important for those businesses to see the hypocrisy in a Sinn Féin-dominated council area.

Mr Dunne: I thank my colleague for reinforcing that point, which was well made and accurate.

The failure to act stands in marked contrast to how the law is enforced against everyone else. Businesses, householders, community organisations and many other groups across the Newry, Mourne and Down area and, indeed, right across Northern Ireland, including in my constituency of North Down, often receive warning letters threatening fines of thousands of pounds and daily penalties for unauthorised signage under the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 and advertisement regulations. Many of the signs involved are modest in nature and non-political, in stark contrast —.

Mr Chambers: Will the Member give way?

Mr Dunne: Certainly.

Mr Chambers: The Member may recall that, in North Down some years ago, a gentleman — a farmer — advertised an evening event for a cancer charity. He put up 12 posters on lamp posts in the North Down area, and the Department took each one of them down and charged him £50. He had to pay £600 out of his own pocket for that. Hypocrisy is certainly at work here.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, Mr Chambers. I concur with that, and it highlights the importance of everybody abiding by the law equally. The point is well made.

As I said, many of the signs were modest and non-political. Enforcement is swift when it comes to ordinary people, but, when it comes to Sinn Féin erecting illegal displays on public land, active enforcement and removal appear to be optional. That is double standards, and it damages public confidence, despite what some in the Chamber may say today.

The Infrastructure Committee has been forced to intervene again in the issue to seek basic information about who owns or erected the billboard, who would be legally responsible if it failed and caused injury or death — that point cannot be overlooked or brushed aside — what sanctions are available and what role Translink has played in any consultation, given the billboard's proximity to key railway infrastructure. There is also the point that some of my colleagues have mentioned about setting a precedent for allowing illegal structures to remain in place indefinitely.

Most troubling of all is the Minister's continual refusal to answer a simple direct question: to whom were the Department's removal requests sent in 2023 and again in 2025, when the current Minister was in post? Was the request in a self-addressed envelope, or was it simply a case of return to sender? Perhaps the Minister will clarify that shortly. The Committee explicitly asked those questions, and the Minister has, unfortunately, chosen not to answer. That is simply unacceptable but, sadly, not surprising. Public roads, verges, bridges and rail infrastructure belong not to any political party, thankfully, but to the whole community in Northern Ireland. Ministers are custodians of that shared space, not arbiters who choose which laws to enforce.

Many questions remain to be answered. Was it erected by Sinn Féin? Was the Minister aware of its erection? Did she recuse herself from decisions involving her party? Does she accept that allowing it to remain undermines the rule of law, confidence in her, as a Minister, and, importantly, in her Department?

Respect for the law cannot be selective, and it is not optional. Enforcement cannot depend on political convenience. If Ministers expect the public to obey the law, they have the opportunity to lead by example, clearly, consistently and without exception. I commend the motion.

Mr McNulty: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will you examine the record of what the Member for South Down said when she stated that the corriboard poster has been removed. It is clearly a JCDecaux-style, Sinn Féin, illegally erected billboard, which was definitely still there, as of this morning. Will the Speaker make a determination on whether it is appropriate for the House to be misled by the Member from South Down?

Mr Speaker: It is certainly not appropriate for anybody to mislead the House. I do not have any evidence of what is going on, so I cannot make a ruling without seeing it with my own eyes. [Laughter.]

Mr Buckley: At the outset, I say, "Congratulations" to the new Member for Newry and Armagh. I wish him well in his new role. I have worked with him and, indeed, his predecessor for a long time. He will put in sterling work in the Chamber.

At the very heart of the motion, which, I imagine, is serious for everybody, is the rule of law. It has already been said that enforcement forms a critical part of the planning process. Many Members have cited reasons for people having been caught up, whether it is businesses or homeowners, in the enforcement process. I understand the narrative that there are many important issues that we could be discussing today and we end up discussing a Sinn Féin billboard, but the point is important, because it is about accountability. As Mr Stewart said, we would not have had to have the debate today if there had been mature decision-making before it reached this stage.

The irony here is that we have a Sinn Féin-led Department, led by a Sinn Féin Newry and Armagh MLA, who fails to address an illegal billboard within her own constituency that has her party's logo, at times, on it. That is beyond parody, Members. Could any other political party say with a straight face, if it knew that there was a billboard in a constituency with its party details on it, that it did not know who erected it? That is the glaring hypocrisy in today's motion.

I read with interest the Committee letter, and I will focus on a point. It states:

Let us clear that up: Minister, who did you issue those letters to? Who did the Department issue the letters to? On the Front Bench today are two Sinn Féin Newry and Armagh MLAs. Did your Department issue them to the man who is sitting beside you? [Interruption.]

A Member: hold on.

Mr Buckley: I will happily give way. I can assure you that, if there were a DUP-erected billboard, I would know who erected it. Does anyone on the Benches opposite really want to take the rule of law seriously or the issue of enforcement seriously? It is ridiculous.

We have to get real: Sinn Féin's defence is always the same, and we have seen it here today. It is that they knew nothing, and they claim it with expert precision. If any Members watched the recent Disney series, 'Say Nothing', they will have seen that, at the end, there is a potent point that Gerry Adams was never a member of the IRA. I contend that, if there were to be a new documentary, the disclaimer at the end of the Sinn Féin statement would be not "say nothing" but "see nothing".

Every time that we come to the House seeking accountability on issues pertaining to particular Departments, we get the answer, "Not me, guv. Saw nothing, heard nothing, will do nothing". Our constituents demand for us to be treated in the same way that we would have them treated. "One rule for thee and another for me" is simply not acceptable.

I call on the Minister to use common sense, to abide by the rule of law, to reveal to the House who those letters from the Department were issued to — were they issued to members of Sinn Féin? — and to endeavour to have an illegal billboard, which could have safety implications, removed and put this matter behind us.

Mr O'Toole: There has been a fair bit of knockabout today, some of which has been done in good part, and that is fair enough. There have been accusations of hypocrisy from the DUP towards Sinn Féin and from Sinn Féin towards the DUP. The truth is that there is pretty glaring hypocrisy from both parties. These issues — and the broader issues of symbols, flags, emblems and posters in a shared society in which space and identity are contested — are all part of the same challenge, and both of those parties are unwilling to confront it honestly.

The motion is about the unlawful erection of Sinn Féin posters in Newry and other parts of the North. My wife is from that part of the world, my in-laws still live there and I know lots of people there, so I am regularly in that part of the world. I know the roundabout at the Egyptian Arch, and I know that there are Sinn Féin posters in several other places in Newry: around Greenbank; near the Showgrounds and Páirc Esler; and in the middle of the city. There are Sinn Féin posters in Warrenpoint, my home town of Downpatrick and other towns.

It is important to say that there is nothing wrong with political speech. Political speech is a vital part of any democracy, and it can be in public spaces. There are multiple ways for political speech to be in public spaces. We are all entitled to have public events to give our views. We are entitled to buy advertising space. We are entitled to display political emblems and messages of all sorts on private land. All the instances that we are talking about, however, are where Sinn Féin has erected, either temporarily or quasi-permanently, political messages with its branding on public land. That is not a trivial matter. It is not the most important issue facing the North or in the Minister's inbox, but it is a real issue. There is a challenge when a Minister, who holds a particular ministry and has a statutory legal responsibility for roads infrastructure and signage, and the safety of road and rail users, is a public representative of a party that is in clear breach of the law, not occasionally but permanently.

That is not a trivial matter, no matter what Ms Ennis says. She says that the DUP is not serious. The DUP may not be serious — I have no doubt that the DUP is playing politics here — but my party and I are serious about it. I, for what it is worth, care deeply about many of the issues that Sinn Féin puts on those posters. I care profoundly about Palestine. I care deeply about, and am in politics to help to achieve, a new and shared united Ireland. Here is the thing: I genuinely do not think that simply erecting Sinn Féin posters with the words "united Ireland" on them all over our towns will persuade people about a united Ireland. It might actually turn the odd, more persuadable, voter off it. What it will do, however, which is perhaps the purpose, is implant subtly in the minds of people, particularly those living in a nationalist area, that that area sort of belongs to Sinn Féin and then constantly remind them that Sinn Féin has part ownership of it or whatever. To be clear: that is not legitimate democratic speech. We seek a vote every number of years to represent people. We do not own those communities nor are we given that power. The SDLP still has a significant vote in Newry. We do not seek the right to put our emblems all over that or any other town.

Ms Bradshaw: I thank the Member for giving way. The Member will know that, in many communities in South Belfast, there are "go slow" posters that have SDLP insignia on them. Is there not a bit of hypocrisy in what you are saying right now?

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you very much for giving me the extra minute. You have given me the opportunity, Mr Speaker, to draw a differentiation between posters that are permanent erections of political messages and what she is referring to. [Interruption.]

I will say the following to the Member. She and I share the constituency of South Belfast — we hear guffaws and whataboutery from all corners of the Chamber — and I agree with her position. She scored a point with me, and that is fair enough. She is entitled to do that. She is a politician, and I am too. You got cheers from Sinn Féin when you said it, but the point is that what Sinn Féin does with its posters undermines our ability, and yours, to regulate the unlawful flying of flags on the Ormeau Road and in Rosetta and Finaghy. The DUP's not standing up against illegal, unlawful displays across unionist, loyalist or mixed communities, such as those in South Belfast, undermines and makes ridiculous its motion about Sinn Féin posters.

I am happy for Ms Bradshaw to challenge me on a poster with SDLP insignia. There are challenges for us all. We need to move to regulating properly —.

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr O'Toole: I will not give way, because I do not have time.

We need to regulate properly the use of insignia in a shared space and a shared community. Why? It is because we live in a shared community. I want to build a new Ireland, but I do not think that I will do that simply by having Sinn Féin posters all over nationalist towns in the North, nor do I think that people will be persuaded of the benefits of Northern Ireland's being in the United Kingdom by having moth-eaten flags all over the Ormeau Road, Carryduff, Rosetta and other parts of my constituency.

Let us be clear: the Minister has a statutory responsibility for roads, road users, railways and the safety of public highways. She should take that statutory responsibility seriously. As the largest party in Government in the North and the largest party on this island that wants to build a new Ireland, Sinn Fein should take this debate seriously. Simply scattering and littering this island with your party posters will not help us build that new society.

Mr Gaston: The motion has certainly brought out the best in some of us today. When I say "best", I mean the "best actors". First prize must go to Newry and Armagh MLA Cathal Boylan, who has been sent to try to defend the Sinn Féin position and to spin, twist and deflect from a health and safety issue that is a hazard for road users. It was, "He said"; "She said"; "What about you?"; "What about me?". What about taking some ownership for your party and what it has done at the Egyptian Arch? First prize goes to you for your comedy display. Indeed, I noticed that you did not take any interventions, so you were not that brave in delivering your party piece.

Next up was Alliance's Mr McMurray. I have sympathy for some of the things that he said but not for a lot of it. What I took out of his contribution is that Alliance completely misses what the motion is about. It is about a massive billboard, so talking about a Correx poster that is 2 feet by 4 feet just does not cut it.

Mr McMurray: Will the Member give way?

Mr Gaston: I will in a second. We are talking about a serious structure that is impacting on road users by bringing their safety into question. I am happy to give way to the Member.

Mr McMurray: As I said to the other Member, as much as I —.

Mr Speaker: Mr McMurray, will you speak to me? Your intervention may be related to Mr Gaston's remarks, but you speak to me.

Mr McMurray: Sorry, Mr Speaker. Given that the Member is behind me, it is a bit counter-intuitive.

The issue is about shared spaces. As much as I love the hipster "Stop DUP sellout" posters that the TUV likes to put up, the point is that they are another form of subliminal political messaging. Such messaging happens constantly in this society, and there needs to be a process by which it is addressed.

Mr Speaker: You have an extra minute, Mr Gaston.

Mr Gaston: Once again, the Member misses the point of the motion. A massive billboard has been put up by Sinn Féin. We are not talking about a Correx poster that will blow in the wind. It is a permanent structure that it has illegally put up, and it needs to be removed. The motion is not about a technical planning dispute; it is about a safety hazard for road users.

The motion is also about whether the law applies equally to everyone or whether Sinn Féin gets a free pass from DFI simply because it holds that ministerial portfolio. In June last year, I asked the Minister for Infrastructure whether she would take action to remove that illegally erected billboard. Article 87 of the Roads Order is crystal clear: the Department has the legal power to require removal or to remove the structure itself. However, instead of enforcement, we have had evasion; instead of a timetable, we have had buck-passing to the council; and instead of action, we have got silence. That is why the DUP felt that it had to table the motion.

What the Department has confirmed is damning. In September 2023, DFI confirmed that the billboard had been erected unlawfully, that those responsible had been asked to remove it — indeed, we have heard that they were asked on two separate occasions to remove it — and that the Department had the power to remove it and had chosen not to. More than a year later, the billboard still stands.

Sinn Féin flouts the law when it suits it. That is no different from what it has done for years and what its bedfellows in the IRA did previously. It is no different now: the political movement thinks that it can do what it wants, when it wants. The Minister must act now, fulfil her ministerial Pledge of Office, show that she is serious and instruct her Department to remove the illegal Sinn Féin billboard without further delay.

I will finish on a positive. I place on the record my thanks to Let's Talk Loyalism for taking the ugly look off the Sinn Féin billboard by amending the wording to read "Northern Ireland is for Everyone". I pay tribute to the artists for the work that they have done to turn it around and make it a sight to behold in south Armagh. However, my encouragement goes to the Minister: if you are serious about law and order, holding the portfolio and fulfilling your ministerial pledge, lead by example and take the billboard down.

Mr Speaker: I call the Minister for Infrastructure, Liz Kimmins. You have up to 15 minutes, Ms Kimmins.

Ms Kimmins (The Minister for Infrastructure): Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle.

I thank the Members for tabling a motion on a billboard that is not there and has not been there for some time. It is clear that the Members who tabled the motion do not drive past the location very often. If they did, they would know that there is no Sinn Féin billboard at the Egyptian Arch.

Mr McNulty: Will the Minister give way?

Ms Kimmins: Happily.

Mr McNulty: Am I imagining things —

A Member: Yes.

Mr McNulty: — in the mornings, when I drive past and see the billboard that Sinn Féin erected? You have taken your logo off it — fair enough — but it is still a Sinn Féin billboard.

Ms Kimmins: There is no Sinn Féin billboard at the Egyptian Arch: that is a fact. The Member can cast aspersions about whatever he thinks it may be, but the fact is that there is no Sinn Féin billboard at the Egyptian Arch.

Mr Buckley: I thank the Minister for giving way. Minister, is that a play on words? Are you saying that, because the messaging on the billboard has changed, the billboard does not exist? Is that what you are saying?

Ms Kimmins: I am stating a fact: there is no Sinn Féin billboard at the Egyptian Arch. That is a fact. [Interruption.]

Listen. [Interruption.]

Mr Speaker: Order. The Minister will be heard.

Ms Kimmins: The bottom line is that the motion was tabled on the basis of what Members believed. Clearly, they had not done their homework and have not been in the area. I live in the area, I represent it and I know that there is no Sinn Féin billboard there. It has been interesting to listen to the commentary, because it is based on something that is in the past.

As the Member who spoke before me said, article 87 of the Roads Order 1993 gives the Department the discretionary power to seek to have an advertisement removed or to remove it, if considered necessary. As Members have acknowledged, the display of advertisements is typically subject to an advertising consent application process, and any breaches of planning regulations are generally addressed under planning legislation. Due to staff resourcing pressures across the transport and road asset management group, particularly in operational areas, priority is always given to managing public safety risks on the road network. As such, my officials will prioritise signs or attachments that are likely to present a safety issue to road users.

Members will be aware of the issues with staffing levels across our operational workforce and the impact that they are having on maintenance more broadly. That is an extremely important point in the discussion. Earlier, my colleague from South Down made a point about comments that Phillip Brett made just last week. Yesterday, I stood in the Chamber and was subjected to scrutiny about where I direct my resources in relation to issues that are of significance to our constituents: roads maintenance, waste water infrastructure, public transport and active travel.

Are Members now seriously asking me to redirect my limited staffing resources from filling potholes to looking at all the posters that are erected throughout the North? Are they asking that I look not just at Sinn Féin posters? I say that because it is clear that the debate is about just Sinn Féin. Are Members seriously asking me to redirect staff to doing that, thus taking them away from dealing with the issues that are supposedly of importance to all Members?

I will return to the issue of the billboard, which is not a Sinn Féin billboard. [Interruption.]

It is mounted — [Interruption.]

Members may think the contrary, but there is no Sinn Féin billboard. [Interruption.]

I will not be drawn into the pantomime that I have witnessed today.

Mr Speaker: Order.

Ms Kimmins: Some of the posts appear — [Interruption.]

Mr Speaker: Order.

Ms Kimmins: Some of the posts appear to be situated on the Department's land, while others are on privately owned land. Part of the billboard is located on land that is not part of the public road network, so the Department does not have statutory powers under the Roads Order 1993 to remove the billboard. The billboard is considered to pose a low risk to road safety for the following reasons: it is set back from the carriageway, at the top of an embankment, meaning that there is little, if any, risk of impact from an errant vehicle or of the billboard causing an impediment to vehicles and/or pedestrians; it does not cause any obstruction to traffic or to sight lines; and it is located in an area where the speed limit is 30 mph, so vehicle speeds are low, meaning that the risk of serious injury is greatly reduced.

We have had a very broad discussion on the issue, but it has also been a very narrow discussion. I welcome the comments from Alliance Members, who rightly pointed out that the issue applies to all political parties, as well as to hate messaging and anti-immigration messaging, which are toxic for our communities. My officials are working closely with the PSNI to ensure that messaging, advertising, billboards and posters about such matters are removed promptly from any departmental equipment, because such material should not be tolerated by any of us.

I hope that we can get back to dealing with real issues and to delivering for people, as we have been elected to do.

Mr Speaker: I call Peter Martin to wind on the motion. Peter, you have up to 10 minutes.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I start by congratulating my colleague Gareth on his maiden speech. Gareth's office in Parliament Buildings is right beside mine, on the third floor. If he ever wants a cup of sugar, he knows that I am in the office beside his. Well done on your maiden speech, Gareth, and welcome to the Assembly.

For clarity, I am speaking not as Chair of the Infrastructure Committee but as my party's spokesperson on infrastructure. Before winding on the motion, I will make a few comments to try to capture the flavour of the debate.

I believe that there has been a clear attempt by Sinn Féin to distance itself from ownership of the billboard. I listened carefully to what the Minister said. She seemed to ignore two pertinent facts. One is that Sinn Féin's party logo was on the billboard. It may not be there now, but it certainly was. The second is that, on 8 October 2023, when no Ministers were in place, a DFI spokesperson said:

A DFI spokesperson also said:

A couple of weeks ago, the Committee wrote to the Minister to ask whether her Department had requested the removal of the billboard, and, if so, to whom exactly the Department had written. The response, which was mentioned during the debate, was:

The Minister did not say to whom that correspondence had been addressed.

Mr Buckley: I thank the Member for giving way. Does he agree that it is telling that, despite its being a subject in the debate, that particular point was not addressed by the Minister? To whom did the Department write? Who owns the billboard?

Mr Martin: I thank my colleague for that intervention. I agree with him completely. I will come on to that shortly.

Most recently, in response to a topical question from Mr Gaston in June 2025, the Minister replied:

Last week at Committee, I asked, somewhat rhetorically, how one transfers ownership of an illegally erected billboard from a political party to someone else. That may sound comical, and, to the Members opposite, it may even sound facetious, but it is legitimately not intended to be. Some of the things that we are debating today lend themselves to a level of farce. It is fair enough for the Members opposite to say that this is a minor issue, a billboard issue or however they want to frame it. They are entitled to that opinion. However, we have to apply the law fairly and equitably, and that must be seen to be the case coming from the Assembly.

That brings me on to two issues that I have with the Minister's handling of the situation. The first is the lack of information coming back to the Committee. It should not be the case that a Committee Chair has to make a FOI request to the Department that he has been put in place to scrutinise in order to find information that is in the public interest. I had to do that last week because the Minister refused to answer one of the questions that we asked. Therefore, I have FOI-ed the Minister's Department, and I will furnish the Committee with that response when I get it.

Secondly, I find it difficult to comprehend that a Minister whose responsibilities include planning can effectively ignore a billboard in her constituency that was erected illegally — those are not my words; those are her Department's words — by her own party. Even someone who is neutral on the issue who hears that fact — those are all facts — would have to recognise that there is something wrong with that.

Our motion refers to the ministerial code. All Ministers, just like everyone else sitting on these Benches, must adhere to the Nolan principles, one of which is:

I do not believe that we are getting enough transparency from the Minister on this issue, and we have heard the reasons for that during the debate.

I have questions that have not yet been answered, and I do not believe that we are going to get to the bottom of it today. However, in reference to the Minister's comments today and in June last year, how does she know that the current billboard is not owned by Sinn Féin, and who does she believe owns it? Based on her answers in June 2025 and here today, the Minister has some knowledge about it. I am willing to give her the Floor if she has any knowledge of that. As a Newry and Armagh Sinn Féin MLA, does she know who erected the billboard? I think that the party opposite has accepted that it had a Sinn Féin logo on it, and the party might make the case that it is not its billboard now. However, everyone in the Chamber and those who are listening to the debate will accept that it certainly was at some point. Where did she get the information that ownership had been transferred — I am using those words; they are not her words — and who gave that information to her? It would be useful to find out who owns the billboard so that her Department can go about enforcement action against them. Does she agree that, in line with planning law, which her Department owns intra vires, the billboard is erected illegally and should be removed, and will she commit today to instructing officials to remove it? I do not think that we have the answers to those questions yet.

I accept that today we are talking about a billboard, and I agree with the Minister that there are big infrastructure issues facing her Department and Northern Ireland that need to be resolved. Therefore, it frustrates me that we are here today talking about a billboard in Newry and Armagh that Sinn Féin owned at one point, probably put up itself, is illegal, does not have any planning permission attached to it and that nobody on the other side of the House knows who now owns or how to get it down. However, we are here because we do not have those answers, and it is my job as Committee Chair — I am not in that role today — to scrutinise the Minister and find those answers, because that is what the party opposite would do to us if it was our Minister down there.

Mr Chambers: Will the Member give way?

Mr Martin: I will.

Mr Chambers: If I heard the Minister correctly, she said that her Department had basically no concerns about that sign sitting on its property. By putting that on the record, is her Department now accepting responsibility for public liability? If so, is that not a dangerous precedent for the Department to set?

Mr Martin: I thank the Member for his question. I do not know the answer, but the Committee will take it on and write to the Minister. I have two minutes to summarise the debate, and I am going to try my best to do that. Apologies if I do not mention everything that has been said.

Mr Boylan pointed out that the motion was not worthy of debate today and there were more pressing things to talk about. Mr McMurray said that the issue was both serious and trivial and pointed out that there are other illegal structures in Northern Ireland. Mr McNulty said that Sinn Féin was willing to break the law and asked who had received the enforcement notice. Mr Stewart stated clearly that the Minister should remove the illegal billboard as soon as possible.

Mrs Ennis — I hope that you are Mrs. I should just use your first name, Sinéad. I am sorry. Sinéad said that there was an irony in our party bringing the motion, and there are more important things to talk about in the Assembly. My colleague Stephen said that the billboard is clearly illegal and also highlighted the hypocrisy and double standards of Sinn Féin on the issue. My colleague Jonathan Buckley asked where the enforcement letters went and pointed out that Sinn Féin's defence was to say nothing. Mr O'Toole — who is very often not there when I refer to him — said that there was hypocrisy on all sides, and he did not believe that we could build a united Ireland through erecting billboards. Timothy Gaston said that it was a Sinn Féin position:

and asked the legitimate question of whether the billboard gets a pass because Sinn Féin holds the Ministry.

In summary, the Minister said very clearly:

that resources in her Department are finite and that there is a low risk to road safety and public safety at the billboard.

I ask Members to support our motion.

Mr Speaker: Members, please take your ease while we change the Chair for the next item of business.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): In conjunction with the Business Committee, the Speaker has given leave to Emma Sheerin to raise the matter of support for young adults with recognised learning difficulties and complex needs in Mid Ulster. Emma, you have up to 15 minutes.

Ms Sheerin: Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Minister, I cannot imagine that you were surprised when you saw this item in the Order Paper, because I have brought the matter and issues related to it to you and your predecessor multiple times over the years. I find it very difficult to navigate the provision of respite and support, particularly for our young people and children with complex needs, learning disabilities and learning difficulties.

I have written to you in the past, Minister, about issues with respite provision in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust, specifically in the Mid Ulster part of the trust area. I have written to you about the likes of Hollybank in Magherafelt, which offers an unbelievable service. All the users of that centre and their families, who get respite through it, are blown away by the staff who work there and the care and attention to detail that they provide. There is not enough of it, however. We have a massive shortage of respite care, and there is a lack of assurance even about the calendar to which families would have had access in the past. There has been an increase on where we were during COVID, but we are not back to pre-COVID levels, and we want to see that addressed.

Beyond that, direct payment hours are a postcode lottery. I am completely perplexed as to how direct payment hours are assessed and allocated in the Northern Trust. I have spoken to numerous social workers, who do their best with limited resources and try at times to rob Peter to pay Paul. We have an issue with the allocation of direct payment hours support for people who live in the most challenging of circumstances and situations.

Parents come to me with young children who need 24-hour supervision or children who need to be fed and are non-verbal. They get in the range of four periods of seven and a half or eight hours of direct payment support in a week. The mothers are almost in tears. They cannot go to work, get a break or get a full night's sleep, because they are constantly on alert. Their cases would tug at anyone's heartstrings. It is really difficult to navigate trying to provide support to those people and to make the case for extra care. Sometimes it feels as though no one is listening.

The case that prompted today's debate specifically is that of Callan Lanigan, one of my constituents, about whom I have previously contacted the trust and the Minister. At the end of November last year, I wrote to you, Minister, detailing Callan's circumstances and asked that you meet Callan, his mother, Cherisse, and me to discuss what increased support we could obtain for him. I was disappointed and Callan's mother was really disappointed that you would not meet us on that occasion. You provided instruction for someone from the trust to meet us, and that happened at the end of last week. We had a conversation that was probably as frustrating as the experience has been to date.

Callan has ADHD, autism and learning difficulties, meaning that his challenging behaviours have oftentimes been misrepresented by people who should have been advocating for him and providing him with support. Callan was a pupil at Kilronan School in my constituency, and the fantastic work done there is a testament to that special school. That intervention really helped Callan, to the point at which he was able to leave there earlier than an awful lot of students in similar situations and move to a unit in a mainstream school, where again he excelled and got on really well.

When his statement ran out at the age of 16, Callan faced a complete cliff edge, and he now has just one day a week at a tech in Cookstown. The strength of that woman, Cherisse, is beyond comprehension. She is a great advocate for her son during a really difficult time in her life. She lost her mother directly after COVID and has been the sole carer for Callan for all of his 17 and a half years on the planet. She has done everything in her power to get him the intervention that he needs, but, time and again, she faces the same brick wall.

Callan gets only 13 hours of direct payment support a week, and that was only after a fight. Cherisse had to source the carers herself to provide that support. She has been to every charity and support service in the North of Ireland to try to get Callan into their service and to get him the intervention, help and engagement that he needs in order to thrive. Time and again, she hears the same message: "Yes, we think that our service probably would benefit Callan, but, because he does not have a learning disability diagnosis, he is not eligible for our support". We have brilliant charities and groups working in our area, such as Positive Futures, Praxis Care, Trinity Support and Care Services and Connect 2 Brilliance. All of them offer services that are commissioned by the trust for people with a learning disability. As Callan has just missed that threshold by the tiniest of margins, he is excluded from all those services, leaving him to linger in a wasteland. He has fallen between stools time and again.

My ask to you, Minister, is that we do something for people like Callan who do not just fit in the box. In the previous mandate, the House passed legislation on autism services. Callan has an autism diagnosis, but none of those services deliver for people with autism. I want to understand what your Department is doing to commission services specifically for autism and to allow those people to get support and intervention at a time when it is so crucial. Callan is 17 and a half years old now. He has already regressed without that engagement in the past year and a half. Cherisse's fear is that he will regress further without targeted intervention at this point. There is no consistency across the board in how that is delivered. All sorts of supports are becoming available for people with autism in conjunction with another diagnosis. I want to understand what we are doing for people who do not have the same severity of diagnosis with regard to learning disability.

I have also had conversations with people around a specific person-centred approach, looking at a person beyond the words on their diagnosis and trying to assess what their needs are on the basis of how they present at that point in time. I would love to know what consideration you have given to adopting that model and what scoping exercises you can do or have done on extending services on that basis when somebody with a particularly challenging diagnosis does not fit in the box that we have seen thus far. Time and again, Callan and his mum have been told that he has challenging behaviours. He has been labelled as "disruptive". He has had tutors and other people in positions of authority say that he is a danger to others in the classroom, stops others being able to learn and prevents other people from accessing what they are all there for. Callan is anxious. With the right support and the right person listening to him, talking to him and engaging with him as he deserves, he could thrive. The fact that he made so much progress at Kilronan School shows that.

As I said, I had a meeting on Friday with Cherisse and someone from the learning disability team in the Northern Trust, a really helpful member of the team there who, I know, wants to support and provide help to Cherisse and Callan. However, his hands are tied because of the criteria currently set by the trust and your Department. I would like to see us overcome that. As they stand, the pathways and routes into those support services are far too restrictive and exclude a cohort of our young people — people like Callan, who needs somebody to make the case for him and deliver the targeted intervention that is so key. That is why I tabled the Adjournment topic. As Cherisse heartbreakingly tells me on so many occasions, she has met and had conversations with so many families across the North with children just like Callan who are now in their 20s, 30s and 40s and are confined to a bedroom, looking at a screen and unable to be in the working world or to be full members of society because they did not get the support that they needed at that critical time. I am really conscious that Callan is in that position right now. I do not want to see his situation deteriorate because of a lack of services. I want to see something from the Department of Health and the Northern Trust to provide him with the help that he needs and deserves. I will continue to be his voice and will support Cherisse in doing that too.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): All other Members will now have approximately six minutes.

Mr K Buchanan: I thank Emma for bringing the topic to the Chamber today. It is timely. It is a matter that has been discussed in our office many times. The transition from childhood to adulthood for young people with learning disabilities and complex needs is an issue that is deeply human and profoundly important for the future of our society. It is not a new problem: families have been trying to navigate and highlight the challenge for many years. In 2012, one of my members of staff, Claire Knox — I have permission to mention her name — recorded a programme with the BBC entitled 'Special Me'. The concerns raised then are the exact same concerns as families are raising today.

For most teenagers, leaving school marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter, but, for many young people with learning disabilities and their families, that moment brings not excitement but anxiety, uncertainty and a profound sense of loss. When those children turn 18, their lives are transformed overnight. They move from child services to adult services, which is a shift that brings new social workers; new respite arrangements, if they are available; and a complete change in routine. For those young people and their families, those changes are not administrative adjustments; they are deeply disruptive. Claire Knox, the mother of a young man who has been through that transition, still speaks movingly about the hopes that she has had for her son and the fears that she felt and still feels as vital support fell away. When her son first left children's services, the family suddenly had no overnight respite; a lifeline simply vanished.

Those young people are no different from any of us. They are hopeful, nervous, funny, brave and full of potential, but they face challenges that most of us have never had to consider. When we left school, we moved on to further education, training or work. Those young people do not have the same post-school or education options. Their pathways are narrower, more fragile and too often dependent on overstretched services. Too many families face a cliff edge at 18. Too many young people lose the structure, support and stability that they rely on. Too many parents are left fighting — as was mentioned, it is a fight — to get whatever support is available. They are sometimes begging for services that should be guaranteed, not gambled for.

We have a responsibility not just as policymakers but as a society to ensure that the transition to adulthood is not a moment of fear but a moment of opportunity. That means properly resourcing adult services. It means ensuring the continuity of care. It means supporting respite provision, employment pathways and community programmes that give people dignity, purpose and independence. Most of all, it means recognising that every young person, regardless of disability, deserves the chance to thrive.

Mr McGlone: Gabhaim mo bhuíochas le hEmma as an tseans a thabhairt dúinn. Is ábhar iontach tábhachtach í an díospóireacht Atrátha.

I welcome the Adjournment debate and the opportunity to highlight our concerns at the lack of support for young adults with recognised learning difficulties and complex needs in Mid Ulster. For all young people and their families, the transition to adulthood is one of the most important and potentially stressful times in their lives. For young adults with learning difficulties and complex needs, that is particularly true. They may face changes to their education, employment, housing and health services. Added to that is their expectation of greater independence and the challenge of navigating complex systems of support. Their families will have concerns about all of those areas, with the added worry of how their loved ones will cope with the changes and what will happen to them when they are on their own. Many of those young people face a cliff edge as they reach 18 or 19 years of age, with few clear, meaningful pathways for them into adulthood.

We will all have been contacted by families and carers of young adults in those circumstances. It is truly essential that support services be readily available and accessible during that time. However, in a rural constituency such as Mid Ulster, that is not the case. Living in a rural area can result in those young people feeling and becoming isolated, despite the best efforts of some. There are fewer clubs, groups and inclusive community spaces to help to build that sense of independence. Mid Ulster's limited bus schedules are infrequent and often do not fit with college timetables and make it difficult to access services and supported employment opportunities. Key services are often based in Belfast or Derry, meaning that there will be delays in accessing them, and long and tiring trips to do so, even with access to a car. Underfunding and staffing pressures in the services that are available also mean that access is inconsistent. I pay tribute to the members of staff to whom Emma referred, who, when they are there, drive their service as best they can and truly live their lives as a vocation.

There are, however, problems in finding appropriate roles with employers in rural areas such as in Mid Ulster. Shortages in specialist provision can often mean that young people are placed in settings that do not meet their needs. While South West College and Northern Regional College offer some support, they may not have the resources or the staff to support complex needs, and the poor provision of broadband in some of our rural areas can limit access to online learning or remote support. Young adults with complex needs frequently experience anxiety, depression or behavioural challenges, but rural mental health services are stretched.

I am presently dealing with a couple of cases where supported accommodation is a requirement. The pressures and difficulties within the household have led to a situation where two young adults in the house require supported accommodation. Those are very difficult circumstances for that family. There is a provider that has refurbished accommodation in Cookstown. It has four units for supported living. On the last occasion that I had a conversation with a senior employee from the trust, four would not even look at it: there were at least 12 people with special, diverse needs who required supported accommodation, where families could not provide that support, and where additional support, supervised support and living accommodation was required.

Those are the pressures that people and families are under. Those are, inevitably, the pressures that young people, once they become 18, find themselves under, without a lot of the safety net that was heretofore with them. There is also a shortage of joined-up planning in education, health and social care, creating a real danger that the lack of coordination between agencies in the transition between school and adulthood can leave young adults without continuity of care during that particularly vulnerable time.

Those problems are caused, fundamentally, by a long-term lack of investment in rural provision. As well as the need for increased, long-term funding in all those areas, a new model of support for young adults with recognised learning difficulties and complex needs is required. Support services need to be reassessed, with families and young adults involved in so far as they can be in the new design, evaluation and commissioning process. There must be improved transport links and accessibility to support in our rural areas; better provision and better coordination of those local services; better planning and collaboration between agencies to improve the transition to adulthood for the young people concerned; more employment and training opportunities through supported partnerships with local employers; and the development of a rural version of Project SEARCH, based in Mid Ulster, alongside employment pathways in our local, small-scale enterprises. None of those solutions is a quick fix — I accept all that — but they are necessary if we are to properly support all the young people in our society, particularly those who are most vulnerable and those who fall outwith the safety net that is there for many others.

Miss McAllister: I thank the MLA for securing today's Adjournment debate. I do not represent Mid Ulster, but the issue affects all our constituencies, and, as a member of the Health Committee, I wanted to take the opportunity to join the debate. The issue has come up often at the Health Committee and on the Floor. At the Health Committee, we have explored a number of the issues that the two Members who spoke previously outlined, but we have not been able to get change on quite a few of the issues.

First, I recognise that, a number of months ago, an event took place in the Long Gallery, and there have been a few more since then. We heard directly from young people with complex needs on what their life will look like once they leave school, for example. It was a really good opportunity to hear from them or from their family members. Some young people had the ability to communicate themselves, and others relied on the help and support of their parents. They all had the same thing in common: they were a person whose desires and wishes for their life should be warranted and valued as much as yours and mine. We should provide services that allow them to achieve what they want to so that they can make the best of their lives. It was a grounding moment for us, as MLAs, to hear from people whose lives are affected every day, especially families who care for loved ones with complex needs.

I know that young adults between the ages of 16 and 25 are a focus of the learning disability service framework and the transitional arrangements for that, but I will raise a question that I ask a lot. The issues of most young people with complex and severe needs are not new and did not suddenly arise. It was known from birth or the preschool years that they would have additional needs and that safeguards and provisions would have to be put in place, so why, with young people such as your constituent, Emma, do we come to a situation in which, 17 years later, we run out of road, we run out of options and it seems as though there is no hope? The severe lack of forward planning is so disappointing.

There are people in the trusts and the Department who work hard and want to see change, but we need to see collaborative work across the trusts. Whether you are from the Northern Trust, the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust or the Southern Health and Social Care Trust area should not matter: you should be able to access the same services.

The issue of direct payments comes up in the constituency office of every MLA. What are they for? I know that they are there to provide options, but they do not seem like an option. For a lot of parents and families, it seems as though the trust is saying, "We can't do anything for you, so go and find it yourself". It is really sad that a lot of those parents have had to fight for everything from the moment that their child was born, whether it is about being placed in the correct school, being assessed by social workers or receiving the rights and benefits to which they are entitled. It just seems as though, from the moment that their children were born, the families have had to fight for everything. I cannot emphasise enough how overwhelming that is, and we, as elected representatives, should make sure that they do not do it alone.

I agree that the Autism Act should have provided a base and a platform on which we could have better services, but that aim has yet to be fulfilled. The Children's Services Cooperation Act 2015 says that you must do something, but it is not done. Where do we go from there, when there are no consequences for not doing things that the law says should be implemented and delivered?

We talk a lot, in the Chamber and in the Committee, about respite. A lot of the families who need respite provision and use direct payments to get in care workers so that they can have a bit of breathing space have turned and will turn to long-term residential care. We need to ensure that that provides the best places for people, so that they can live in the way that they want, carry out their activities and be happy and safe. Unfortunately, we are seeing the institutionalisation of young people. The Muckamore scandal taught us that such things should never happen again, and it shone a light on why we need transparency in how we care for people with complex needs, yet we still fail so many people. I am not talking about failure in the sense of what happened there but about the institutionalisation of our young people: that should not happen in this day and age. Everyone should have somewhere to call home. If that is with their family, whether or not that means their parents, the family should be supported to provide that.

I look forward to hearing the outcome of the consultation on the learning disability framework — I know that it has just closed and that that will take time; it is important that we get these things right — and about the changes to payments for people who live in residential care. I also look forward to an update on delegated nursing tasks and on the transitional arrangements for anyone aged 16-to-19-plus.

I know that the task is massive, but it should be undertaken collectively across the trusts and parties.

Mr Butler: I thank Emma Sheerin for securing this important Adjournment debate. I go so far as to say that the subject deserves a full motion and that every party would face the same way in that debate. The difficulties that your constituents in the Northern Trust face are mirrored by those of my constituents in Lagan Valley. I have had some challenges with the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust and have written to successive Ministers, including the one in front of me. He is currently my leader and boss, but I will not hold back in what I will say.

I chair the all-party group (APG) on disability and have done for a number of years, so I can evidence my passion for children, young adults and older people with disabilities and learning disabilities. I had the pleasure of acting as vice chair of the APG on learning disability for a number of years, and I am still a very active member of it. We need to put the issue in the full context of why those difficulties exist for our young people who have a learning disability, whether it relates to autism or ADHD, or who have complex needs relating to multiple diagnosable conditions.

The reality is, as Nuala McAllister rightly said, children face discrimination and difficulties from birth. Actually, they face difficulties even before birth, because we know — I do not say this to be controversial — that unborn babies with a disability do not enjoy the same protections as a child with no disabilities. That is not my being political; it is the reality for parents who are faced with a question when they are told, "We are sorry to tell you that your baby has a difficulty. An abortion is an option for you." That protection does not exist even before they are born.

When the child goes to school, it is worse. I was on the Education Committee when we were faced with outright discrimination and bias against children who needed a statement. There was what was described as a "stovepipe" of thousands and thousands of children across Northern Ireland who could not get a statement, which would have led to them getting the additional help that they needed. What was that down to? It was down to a cultural bias that existed in some places. I am talking about something in the past 10 years, not in the 1800s or 1900s. Fewer than 10 years ago, people were still fighting to get a diagnosis of autism or some other neurodivergent condition for their child. All that people are looking for is a level playing field for their child.

It is an all-government problem, because people with learning disabilities, such as pronounced autism and all those conditions, face challenges in every aspect of life. You will be well-versed in Caleb's cause, which was established by Alma White and which looks at post-19 provision, and Ministers — the Economy Minister, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education — have engaged with that campaign. We are having those conversations, but, at some point, those conversations need to move into answers. They need to move into the space where we can say that every person's life has value and every person should get the help and assistance that they need.

I return to the specific issue of respite and care. Emma Sheerin raised a really good challenge to the Minister about direct payment hours and how we allocate those. In reality, I have found that, when I try to represent my constituents, there is sometimes a workforce issue, and I know that the Minister will probably talk to that. It is one of those issues where we have to look at the workforce, value its members and recognise that a really special set of skills and a big heart is required to work with the young people and adults who need that care. I think of their families, and Emma painted an incredible picture of a mum who is an absolute warrior but who is on her knees. There are people who want to do the work, and we need to find a way to recruit, support and remunerate them.

I am glad that we have a Health Minister who is absolutely committed and faces the right direction. That is not a party political point; it is why we wanted to take on the Health portfolio and those big challenges, so that we can find solutions that will bring a tangible answer and real change to those people who deserve it.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): I call the Minister. Minister, you have up to 10 minutes.

Mr Nesbitt (The Minister of Health): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Before I turn to the prepared remarks that you would expect me to have, I want to acknowledge — not just acknowledge but admire — Emma Sheerin's passion in trying to help her constituents and in ensuring that Callan gets to live his best life. His particular set of circumstances mean that he needs help to do that, and I get it that that help is not there.

I also get that Cherisse, the mum, was not happy when I said that I would not meet her and instead referred her to officials.

I just hope that the Member understands that there is a kind of line that differentiates what I do from what I do not do. I will go out and meet patients, service users, their families and Health and Social Care (HSC) providers who work with children and adults with learning difficulties to inform myself about what is and is not working as a system. What I do not do, however, is meet individuals who are advocating for themselves or their loved ones. I have not added up the number, but the reason for that is that I have a strong sense that, since coming into post in late May 2024, I receive, I reckon, on average six requests a day via email and social media saying, "Please intervene. Please help". Some of them would break your heart, such as, "I'm sitting with my 91-year-old mother in an ED. She's been here for 18 hours, and nobody's looking after her" or, "We need a life-saving operation for my husband". I do not need to go into it. You get the picture. Again, I have not added them up, but, over that time, that is probably between 6,000 and 7,000 requests. If I start responding to all of them, we would have a two-tier system. We would have the Health and Social Care system for most and a Minister of Health national health system for 6,000 or 7,000 people. It feels brutal, but, if I did it, it would create an imbalance and a huge bias, and there would be no time left to do the strategic vision stuff as Minister of Health. I am sorry if that sounds brutal, but that is the reality of the position that I am in. As Robbie said, the Department of Health may lead on the issue, but there are other Departments that have to look at Callan's long-term needs, not least in education and housing, which are beyond my remit, in order to help him.

Unfortunately, it is the case that, across the five geographic trusts, there is no specific programme of support for people with learning difficulties as distinct from people with a diagnosed learning disability. The appropriate support for people with learning disabilities will be determined by their specific needs. For example, if a person has complex needs that relate to healthcare, physical disability or sensory issues, it is a trust physical disability services team that assesses the individual and provides them with the relevant supports. Those might include, for example, the provision of specialist equipment, social care or signposting to other sources of support. If an individual has mental health issues, it is the local community mental health team that should provide that support. If it relates to employment or education, however, the trusts have no statutory remit to provide services.

I will touch on direct payments, because it is something that came to me early in my tenure. I have taken a specific interest in it, and I came to the conclusion quite early on that we have overcomplicated it. We put too much responsibility on parents. We are asking them to be employers, and a lot of them say, "We don't want to be employers. We just want the right help for the child whom we love". It was put to me that the regime in the Republic of Ireland is a lot more user-friendly, and I have asked my officials to look at it.

I think that it will all come under what I am coming on to now, which is our desire to introduce a learning disability service model. The Member asked what the model is: we are talking about a new model that takes a new approach to supporting adults with a learning disability through Health and Social Care services across the jurisdiction. I will set out the key outcomes that we want to achieve, the principles that will guide delivery and the actions that we need to take to improve services for people such as Callan and his mum.

We have several key ambitions for people with complex needs so that they can receive lifelong, coordinated support that is tailored to their specific needs and enables them to make the right choices and have the appropriate level of control. As part of that model, we have consulted and have hosted regional, in-person roadshows that were largely attended by families and carers, as they should be. The topic of services for people with severe autism was raised during the events, as well as lengthy waiting lists for diagnosis, access to services and the lack of support and self-training.

At the roadshows, concerns were raised about IQ testing as it relates to access to services for people with severe autism who present with a level of vulnerability that requires specific care and support. I want to be clear: trusts are commissioned to deliver health and social care services to adults who have a confirmed diagnosis of a learning disability. That is identified by trust psychology services and is done through the standardised testing of a significant impairment of both intellectual and social functioning during the developmental period, typically before the individual reaches the age of 18. For individuals who are deemed to have a learning difficulty, there is no dedicated commissioned service.

An individual presenting with complex health and social care needs can avail themselves of a multidisciplinary assessment with specific and specified support and intervention, regardless of their learning disability or difficulty. While trusts will often consider which programme of care or service area will best meet an individual's needs under their "best fit" principles, it is acknowledged that it can be challenging to meet the ongoing social care needs of individuals who do not meet the access thresholds for existing statutory support services, such as learning disability, mental health or physical and sensory disability services. Most individuals with autism will be higher-functioning — that is having an IQ of over 70 — and will not, therefore, meet the criteria for accessing adult learning disability services.

The analysis of the service model public consultation responses will be used to inform consideration of how individuals with severe autism who present with complex needs in adaptive and social functioning should access suitable social care services in a regionally consistent manner.

I will not get through the rest of my notes, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I will say that, for Mid-Ulster, the Northern Trust's adult autism service offers short-term therapeutic interventions aimed at helping autistic adults to identify and understand their differences and find helpful ways of coping. All individuals aged 16 and over in Mid-Ulster who are waiting for an assessment and post-diagnosis support can also access the Northern Trust's adult autism advisory service. That service offers monthly drop-in advisory sessions across the trust area, along with virtual educational awareness sessions.

I may be straying a little, but, on children's short-term breaks, Health Committee member Nuala McAllister was well aware that we were able to find some money to provide additional support. However, that is one of the rare areas in health and social care delivery where the primary obstacle to delivering better outcomes for the service users and their parents is not money; it is the workforce. You need a highly specialised and motivated workforce and the physical infrastructure such as buildings. That is where, frankly, we have faced massive challenges since we announced that we had found additional money to help in that area.

The whole area is incredibly important. If we are going to let those young people have the opportunity to live their best lives, we need a coordinated and multidisciplinary approach. I finish where I began: we need the passion of MLAs such as Emma Sheerin to keep the issue at the top of the agenda for health and social care delivery.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you very much indeed, Minister, and thank you very much indeed, Emma, for bringing the debate to the Floor.