Official Report: Monday 22 June 2026

Mrs Mason: As the World Cup once again captures the attention of millions across the globe, many people in South Down are remembering a very different World Cup. On 18 June 1994, Ireland celebrated a famous victory over Italy. Six innocent men were murdered in the Heights Bar in Loughinisland as they watched that match. Adrian Rogan — "Frosty" — Malcolm Jenkinson, Barney Green, Dan McCreanor, Patsy O'Hare and Eamon Byrne were shot dead simply for gathering with friends and neighbours to support their national team. I was six years old at the time; the same age as some of the children who lost their fathers that evening. Like so many children across Ireland, I remember the excitement of that World Cup, but, for those children and the community of Loughinisland, that joy was stolen in an instant.

What followed the massacre was decades of obstruction, concealment and denial. The weapon used in the Loughinisland massacre did not appear out of thin air; it was linked to the 1980s loyalist arms shipment associated with Ulster Resistance, with weapons later distributed among loyalist paramilitary organisations. I remind Members that Ulster Resistance was launched publicly in 1986 with the support and participation of senior unionist figures, including leading members of the DUP of the time. The images from the Ulster Hall in November 1986 show Ian Paisley and others standing publicly at that launch. Paisley declared that he was prepared to give Ulster Resistance his undivided support. Many of those imported weapons later entered the hands of loyalist paramilitary organisations, including elements of the UDA and the UVF. One of those weapons would ultimately be used to murder six innocent men in the Heights Bar. More than 30 years later, many of the weapons remain unaccounted for, while families are still denied the full truth about how they came to be used against their loved ones.

Families are entitled to ask difficult but legitimate questions. What did senior DUP figures know about the acquisition and distribution of those weapons? What discussions took place between political figures and those involved in organising the Ulster Resistance arms importation? Given that weapons linked to an organisation publicly launched with the involvement of senior DUP figures were later connected to multiple loyalist attacks, does the DUP accept any political responsibility for the circumstances that allowed those weapons to arrive here and to be used?

From Loughinisland to Bellaghy and from the Ormeau Road to Greysteel, families have encountered the same grim reality: a pattern of collusion, concealment and protecting agents and institutions. It is a pattern of denying families the truth. The Police Ombudsman's investigation of Loughinisland laid bare that reality. Intelligence was withheld, informers were protected and evidence was destroyed. The findings were clear: collusion was a significant feature of what happened before, during and after those murders.

Thirty-two years on, families are still fighting for answers, and we stand with them. No matter how many obstacles are placed in their path, the families in Loughinisland continue to prove that truth is stronger than secrecy —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mrs Mason: — and justice is stronger than collusion.

Mrs Dodds: Once again, I will speak in the House about puberty blockers and the nationwide trial run by King's College. I now understand that the Government will issue new guidance that will allow such a trial to go ahead. It is very concerning that the new guidance will potentially allow young girls aged 11, so still at primary school, and young boys aged 12 to participate in the trial and to access puberty blockers with parental consent. The guidance goes on to talk about other issues with puberty blockers and reasons why the trial could be stopped, such as if there are concerns about effects on bone density, the impact on brain function or vaginal bleeding.

Originally, Dr Cass talked about the science behind gender clinics as being on shaky foundations but then decided that the trial was necessary. Let me be clear: experimental treatment on children that can have lifelong implications is unconscionable. Children of 11 or 12 are in no position to give clear consent to the use of such drugs, especially when those administering the treatments had them banned because of the lack of evidence on their long-term impacts. We know that children who want to access those drugs are some of the most vulnerable children in our society. Why would we want to damage them further? Our Government are talking about a ban on social media for young people under the age of 16, and, while that may be a good thing, they are in the same breath talking about administering life-altering drugs to children of 11 or 12. The Government have surely lost their moral compass.

What does it mean for us in Northern Ireland? After an enormous amount of flip-flopping on his part, we eventually got the Minister of Health to the Chamber to say that Northern Ireland would not be part of the trial. We need reassurance from him that that position stands and that Northern Ireland's children will be protected from such experimentation.

Mr Tennyson: One of the perennial failures of the Assembly has been our inability to grapple with the issue of flags displayed on street furniture. In the past week alone, I have seen paramilitary flags erected outside a school in Banbridge, while residents of Drumnagoon, which is a mixed and shared community of new developments in Craigavon, have woken up to find their neighbourhood festooned with flags, against the wishes of local residents. I respect and acknowledge everyone's right to express their identity and their culture, but surely we can all agree that displaying criminal gangs' flags in our community is not culture, nor is masked men — nameless individuals — erecting flags overnight for an unspecified period with no consultation with local residents.

The response from statutory agencies is consistently inadequate. Despite it being an offence under article 87 of the Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993, we see no enforcement action whatever from the Department for Infrastructure. I call on the Infrastructure Minister to set out what she will do to start to tackle the issue. It is also the case that we spent £800,000 on the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition (FICT) report, which set out a way forward to deal with the issues, but, of course, that report languishes on the desks of the First Minister and the deputy First Minister, with no action forthcoming.

Year in, year out, every MLA gets reports from families who feel intimidated when a flag goes up outside their house. Every year, we get complaints about the divisions that are stoked and the fear that is created in communities. It is long past time that all parties in the Chamber showed the leadership that is required and put in place a system of enforcement for when flags are flown on street furniture.

Dr Aiken: It must be said that £181·3 million is a lot of taxpayers' hard-earned money. It is money that is raised from local commuters, vehicle owners, farmers, local businesses, logistics companies and, above all, our constituents — those vital people whom we are elected to represent. That £181·3 million is the figure in capital expenditure that Liz Kimmins, the Sinn Féin Minister responsible for our infrastructure, sent back to the Department of Finance, because of her inability to spend money on our roads or anything else for that matter. I will say it again: £181·3 million. We know that the Department is dysfunctional. We know that her Department spends more on legal cases, fighting judicial reviews and being chastised by judges for legal ineptitude and on vesting land and ripping out hedges and fencing and then trying to unvest it and paying even more money to put back the fences and hedges that it took out. It is responsible for keeping our bloated legal and planning-consultant vultures in new holiday homes and Porsches, with apologies to vultures, Mr Speaker.

No one is accountable or responsible for the debacle. It goes without saying that Sinn Féin's Minister Liz Kimmins refuses to take accountability or responsibility. We will not be expecting her to resign over the £181·3 million farce. We can hardly blame the current permanent secretary, as she has just taken up her post, but, surely, her predecessors must bear some accountability or responsibility, especially considering the senior civil servants' salary scale of between £146,000 and £163,000, with, of course, their taxpayer-funded pension contribution of 34·2% — £218,000 a year is nice remuneration for not spending £181·3 million. It is no surprise that they will not be resigning either.

I will say it again: £181·3 million. On the basis of the highly inflated DFI costs of around £500 per pothole, that represents 362,000 potholes that the Department of ineptitude could have filled in over the past two years. Instead, that most dysfunctional Department, under the most inept Sinn Féin Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly and a series of grossly over-superannuated permanent secretaries, gave the money back. While we cry out for improved water infrastructure, the fixing of our roads, the building of the A5 and the progression of the York Street interchange project, people suffer daily on our roads, yet Liz Kimmins and her permanent secretaries gave £181·3 million back.

It is little wonder that our electorate wonder why we have such a Department when it gives back £181·3 million. We have permanent secretaries who are pocketing pay packets of £200k-plus and Sinn Féin Ministers who are not accountable or responsible for anything. I hope that, next May, there will be an accounting for those inept and completely useless Ministers and Departments.

Mr McNulty: I am honoured to speak to welcome the settlement reached in the case relating to the murders of the Reavey brothers in south Armagh in 1976. The settlement comes more than 50 years after the appalling and shocking murders of John Martin, Brian and Anthony in their home in Whitecross. Eugene Reavey not only had to cope with the loss of his brothers in the most horrendous circumstances imaginable but was subjected to repeated harassment and abuse when his brothers' memories were tarnished by false claims that they were paramilitaries.

I attended the High Court alongside the Reavey family, and I admire its dignity and determination during its long and arduous pursuit of justice. Sadie Reavey, Eugene's mother, lit a candle every night and prayed for the men who murdered her sons. Talk about strength, forbearance and generosity. The strength and bravery shown by Eugene Reavey over the past five decades has been extraordinary. He knew that his brothers were innocent, and, with a relentless determination, he never stopped fighting for truth and justice to clear their names. Eugene said that while he was being cross-examined by the defence barristers last week, he had not felt so pumped up since the 1969 county final when Whitecross defeated Ballymacnab 0-4 to 0-2.

It was humbling to stand with Eugene and his family in court when the settlement was reached, and to see them finally receive that long-overdue acknowledgement. It was a proud day for the Reavey family, a proud day for Whitecross and a proud day for south Armagh. I welcome the fulsome apology offered by Chief Constable Jon Boutcher and the acceptance of the failures of the RUC. No settlement can undo the pain suffered by the Reavey family, especially as the gun used in that case was used in 11 murders that could have been prevented had proper procedures been followed.

The acknowledgement of the truth remains an important moment for the Reavey family. It is the largest legal settlement for any legacy case. It should never have taken so long to reach this point, but as Eugene said to me as we walked out of court last Thursday, "I can feel a weight starting to lift". Well done, Eugene; well done, Roisin; and well done to the entire Reavey family. I know that it has been a massive team effort by you all. We are all so delighted for you. Good luck for what is next.

Mr Baker: Another school year is coming to an end, and, unfortunately, as has been the case time and time again, the same group of children will not have a place to allow them to start school in September. Hundreds of children with additional and complex needs are sitting at home not knowing what is going to happen next. That is a shameful indictment of the Minister's failure to prepare. The Education Authority (EA) and the Department of Education told us to judge them by this year, and, once again, hundreds of children are being left behind.

It will be those children who will be offered places that do not even exist. It will be the same children who will end up on reduced timetables that the Department and the EA have no record of: no one is even keeping tabs on them. What message is that to send to those parents? Those children will be excited and want to go to school with their peers. As they watch on, their peers will know where they are going, but they will not know where they will be. It is a cliff edge every single year. At this time last year, as Members drew to a close, heading towards recess, the Education Minister did not come to the House even though hundreds of children were being left behind. He was, in fact, in Florida, championing TransformED. Where is he today? Are we going to hear anything in the weeks ahead that will give some reassurance to parents? I very much doubt it.

It is not just the Education Minister who is failing that same group of children. It is the Health Minister, too. Post-19 children are heading for a cliff edge. The very modest ask from Caleb's cause was for the Minister to prioritise preparatory work towards legislation to support those children. That did not happen. In fact, that campaign was gaslighted. That is shameful. As we head towards summer, when families need a bit of respite, it is a postcode lottery when it comes to direct payments. In the Belfast Trust, you may have 10 or 16 hours, but if you move across into the South Eastern Trust, parents are being told that a child can have only two or four hours because the trust does not want them to get too reliant on that support. What a disingenuous message to send to parents. The condition of children with additional and complex needs is not going to change nor is the support that they need, so why are they always messed about? It is the same families who are always messed about.

Where will the leadership come from? With just two weeks left, will the Education Minister and the Health Minister come to the House to lay out their plan? I doubt that very much.

In the past number of weeks, I have seen more time in the Chamber spent arguing over something that has been vetoed. Hours upon hours spent debating something —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Baker: — that will not even happen.

Mr Buckley: While prime ministerial resignations are a much more common occurrence these days — my six-month-old daughter is now moving towards her second PM — it is important that we reflect on what has been one of the most disastrous premierships in modern times. The British people were told that, under Keir Starmer, things would only get better; instead, families found life becoming harder, businesses found it more difficult to survive and confidence in government sank even lower. His legacy will not be bold leadership or economic revival; he will be remembered for stripping winter fuel payments from pensioners, taxing small businesses to breaking point and placing the future of family farms in jeopardy or maybe for pursuing eye-watering net zero targets and spending while ordinary households struggled to pay their bills. Time and again, he claimed to stand for working families, but where was that support when those families were battling the cost of living? Where was the relief for the people choosing between heating and eating? Instead, many people looked at their electricity bills and wondered how Britain, a nation blessed with so much potential, could see some of the highest energy costs in the Western world.

And then there was immigration. The Prime Minister promised to smash the gangs and to stop the illegal crossings, yet the boats kept coming. Just last week, more than 1,600 illegal immigrants crossed the English Channel in 23 boats. The British people have been demanding action on illegal and uncontrolled immigration for years, but, like so many before him, Sir Keir simply did not listen. Is it any wonder that many give him the title "two-tier Keir" — a man more interested in the international order than his own domestic order in the United Kingdom. He applied one standard to himself and, indeed, his political allies and another to the rest of the country.

Let us not mistake today's events for victory. One Prime Minister is gone, but the ideology that produced those systemic failures remains. If Andy Burnham succeeds him, it should not be assumed that the UK is embarking on a new direction. Changing the face at the top does not change the policies underneath. It would simply be more of the same, albeit delivered in a northern accent. This country does not need a rebranding exercise; it needs fundamental reform —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Buckley: — and common sense to be placed back at its heart.

Mr Honeyford: A new survey of business leaders should be a wake-up call to all in the House but particularly to the Department for the Economy and the Department for Infrastructure. The message from business that was released last week is stark and clear. Eighty-two per cent of businesses say that Stormont's current policy and lack of decision-making is constraining growth; 74% believe that economic growth is deprioritised in decision-making; just 1% of business leaders rate as "strong" the follow-up from policy announcement to real-world delivery; and 58% have delayed investment. Our biggest economic challenge is no longer lack of opportunity; it is absolutely the lack of delivery. Whatever the constitutional future that people want in this place, this region has to work. The Executive are failing to provide certainty and follow-up on their commitments. My colleague Andrew Muir having had his green growth strategy blocked for over a year is just one example.

Not every challenge is within Stormont's control — I acknowledge that — but what we can control and need to control is the creation of the platform that drives growth. Energy is a prime example, just like other areas of our economy. Investors are asking not for miracles but for certainty: a master plan, a clear policy road map and clear timelines and a stable legislative framework that gives private investors the confidence to invest in our future. That investment will not happen to its full potential without that plan and that certainty from the Department for the Economy. Two and a half years into the term of this Executive, much of that remains missing. The same applies to waste water infrastructure and planning reform, with delays continuing to block growth and investment. We should do much more to collaborate North/South, as we do east-west, to improve people's lives.

The void of delivery is becoming an economic risk in its own right. We do not lack the talent, the ambition or the opportunity. The challenge that we have is not in identifying what needs to be done; the challenge is in having a political system that is willing to make it function and make decisions. The challenge is in delivering actions at the pace that our economy and our businesses require. The gap between ambition and action is costing us in investment, jobs and growth, and that needs to change right now. Alliance will support anyone who comes forward with opportunities, but, unfortunately, we have not seen very many of those, and there is little that we can support. Our economy needs action, and it needs it now.

Mrs Dillon: At the weekend, Fleadh Thír Eoghain

was hosted by Clogher Valley Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann in Ballygawley. Over a fantastic weekend, we saw a display of musicians, storytellers and singers of all ages compete and enjoy craic agus ceol

. I congratulate all the competitors who took part and offer my best wishes to those who were successful in getting through to compete at the Ulster fleadh in Warrenpoint from 19 July to 26 July.

I mention in particular my local branch, Coalisland Clonoe Comhaltas. The talent on display does not happen in a vacuum; it is down to the hard work of many volunteers, and the individuals who put in massive effort. Comhghairdeas agus go raibh míle maith agaibh

who volunteer their time and energy and make sacrifices to teach and to support the talent and the culture. I see the same faces at my local branch every week. They know who they are. I, along with many parents, thank you. Without your volunteering spirit and support for our children, they would not have had the opportunity to play instruments, to sing and to be storytellers. You are the heart of supporting the culture to flourish. As I said, the volunteering spirit is immense and was very much on display over the weekend in Ballygawley. I thank all who put in the effort and worked really hard over the past year to ensure that the event was successful. I thank the volunteers, the community and the businesses of Ballygawley that supported the event.

I wish everybody all the very best in Fleadh Uladh

and in the first Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann

to be hosted in Belfast. I sincerely hope that we will see members of Coalisland Clonoe Comhaltas represented at the fleadh in Belfast in August. Maith sibh.

Mr Bradley: I record my appreciation to everyone who contributed to the tremendous success of Armed Forces Day 2026 in Coleraine. On Saturday, thousands gathered in the town to recognise and celebrate the contribution made by serving personnel, veterans, reservists, cadets and military families. The event demonstrated the strong bond that exists between our armed forces and the communities that they serve.

The day began with a drumhead service and a wreath-laying ceremony at the war memorial, providing a fitting opportunity to remember those who made the supreme sacrifice and to reflect on the dedication and service of all who have worn the uniform of our nation. The Armed Forces Day parade, led by the Royal Irish Regiment, received a warm welcome through the streets of Coleraine from the spectators who lined both sides. Throughout the afternoon, families and visitors enjoyed military displays, exhibitions, live entertainment and community activities, creating a positive and inclusive atmosphere for people of all ages. Among the highlights were the impressive RAF Falcons parachute display, the ceremonial gun salute by 206 (Ulster) Battery Royal Artillery and the fly-past by the Battle of Britain memorial flight Dakota aircraft. All served as a powerful reminder of the courage and sacrifice of previous generations.

I was pleased to join fellow elected representatives at the celebrations, especially my colleagues the deputy First Minister and the party leader, Gavin Robinson, as well, of course, as veterans, serving personnel and members of the public. It was particularly encouraging to see so many young people engaging with the event and learning more about the role and history of our armed forces. I commend Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, the 38 (Irish) Brigade, the Royal Irish Regiment, veterans' organisations, volunteers, performers, the emergency services and all those whose hard work ensured the success of the day.

Armed Forces Day provides an important opportunity to recognise the professionalism, commitment and sacrifice of those who serve. Coleraine demonstrated, once again, its pride in our armed forces, and the community demonstrated its gratitude for all that they do. I place on record my sincere thanks to all serving personnel, veterans, reservists, cadets and military families. Their service deserves our recognition and appreciation not only on Armed Forces Day but throughout the year.

Mr Durkan: Yesterday marked Global Motor Neurone Disease Awareness Day, which presents an important opportunity to raise awareness of a condition that is devastating and, as yet, incurable. MND is a fatal and rapidly progressing neurological disease that gradually robs people of the ability to walk, use their hands, speak, swallow and breathe. While the body fails, the mind often remains unaffected. It is difficult to imagine the courage that is required to face such a horrific diagnosis or the resilience that is shown by those who live with the condition and the families who care for them every day. Around 120 people here currently live with MND, and that number is expected to rise to around 200 within the next decade. Of course, they are not just numbers; they are our loved ones, our colleagues, our neighbours and our friends.

Across the UK, a third of those who are diagnosed with MND die within a year, and more than half die within two years. Sadly, the outcomes are worse here. Delays in diagnosis mean that people lose precious time that could have been spent accessing specialist care, planning for the future and making the most of the little time that they have left. Although there is currently no cure for MND, timely diagnosis, coordinated care and appropriate support can make a profound difference to the quality of life of patients and their families.

Recently, some of us in the Chamber had the privilege of welcoming to Parliament Buildings people who are living with MND, at an event that was hosted by the Motor Neurone Disease Association. That was a deeply moving, informative and, indeed, inspirational event. We heard at first hand about the realities of living with the cruel disease but also about the determination, dignity and courage shown by those affected. Those voices deserve to be heard, and not just on awareness days. I call on the Executive to do better for people living with MND and the families that support them. That means ensuring timely diagnosis, strengthening specialist services, supporting research and delivering the practical care and assistance that the patients and carers so desperately need. For those who are living with MND, time is the one thing that they simply do not have. We owe it to them to act with urgency, compassion and determination.

Mr Speaker: The RHI (Closure of Non-Domestic Scheme) Bill has received Royal Assent. The RHI (Closure of Non-Domestic Scheme) Act (Northern Ireland) 2026 became law on 17 June 2026, and it is chapter 5.

Mr Nesbitt (The Minister of Health): I begin with an unconditional apology for the evil that was perpetrated in Muckamore Abbey Hospital, as confirmed by the inquiry report, which was published last week, on 18 June.

I thank the leader of the Opposition. Today is Opposition day, and, when I asked him whether he would make way for the statement, he agreed without hesitation. Thank you, Mr O'Toole. I believe that that is the definition of a responsible Opposition.

I invite Members to reflect on the words "Muckamore Abbey Hospital": "Muckamore", a location; "Abbey", a place of Christian values and practice and a sanctuary for visitors; and "Hospital", a place for care and compassion. The words "Muckamore Abbey Hospital" therefore suggest the perfect home for the vulnerable, but, for far too many, for far too long, it was anything but. That is a true scandal, and, for that, I offer an abject apology from me and on behalf of the entire health and social care (HSC) system. That apology means little on its own, and the 106 recommendations in the inquiry's report are a testament to that. I thank the inquiry chair, Tom Kark KC, and his colleagues for the report and for the care and diligence that they took in conducting their inquiry. The amount of evidential material provided was considerable, as was and the number of witnesses who spoke to the inquiry, and I thank all who helped uncover the scandal.

As I said in my initial response on Thursday, the report must be a watershed moment for the treatment and care of the most vulnerable in our society. Anything less is unacceptable. It is unforgivable to let down those who rightly expected the health system to look after their loved ones. They placed their trust in the system to keep their loved ones safe and to provide them with the care and compassion that they needed. Again, I can only say sorry.

What happened has been devastating. It has devastated trust, devastated confidence in healthcare and, above all, devastated lives. I am struck by the report's identifying families as feeling guilty when they saw the devastating CCTV footage. They felt guilty because they felt that they had failed their loved ones. I say this to those families: your emotions are natural, because you are decent, caring human beings, but it was not your fault. Rather, it was the fault of healthcare professionals who did not share your caring, loving values. You were let down, and you were failed. You were then not believed — not believed — when you sounded the alarm.

Mr Speaker, we should all be human. If it were you or one of your loved ones in Muckamore, how would you want to be treated? Humanely, I suggest. That it has taken a public inquiry to get to the bottom of issues that were raised over a number of years, when they could and should have been addressed at the time, is so, so wrong. For that, I am truly sorry. I am sorry that families had to fight so hard and for so long to have their concerns taken seriously. I am sorry that they had to relive painful experiences so openly and in public in order to make the system understand. I am sorry that the services that they should have been able to trust, without a moment's hesitation or second thought, so badly let them down.

I pay tribute to the bravery and perseverance of all the families who have made sure that their loved ones have had their voice heard, starting when the initial allegations of abuse were raised in August 2017 and continuing through the work of the inquiry to the current day. I do not underestimate the toll that that has taken on you and the personal cost incurred from your being required to relive experiences so publicly through your engagement with the inquiry. I can only hope that the publication of the final report, with its 106 recommendations, in some way vindicates your efforts and determination.

I also acknowledge the health and social care staff, past and present, who engaged positively with the inquiry. It has not been without cost to them, and, in some cases, a very considerable cost, but their engagement was vital. I also thank those from outside our health system who assisted the inquiry with its work. Many findings, conclusions and comments in the report made for uncomfortable reading. One such suggestion was that the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust did not consider that evidence from families and patients should have been given equal weight to its own records. Equally, I was concerned to read in the report:

That is not what I would have expected, or wanted, to be the position that the trust adopted.

Given the trust's central role, I can inform Members that I am already scheduled to meet trust representatives later this afternoon. I expect them not only to provide an initial assessment of the report but to account specifically for the inquiry's stinging criticism of the trust's approach to the inquiry.

On Thursday, I reacted to recommendation 2 of the report, which allows the Department of Health up to six months to make public whether it accepts the report's recommendations or explain why it does not. I want to do much better than that because we owe it to those who suffered, their families and friends and to the future of public confidence in the delivery of health and social care. I have observed significant cynicism suggesting that lip service will be given to the 106 recommendations in the report and that the report will be left to gather dust on the shelf: that is not my style. I am determined that it will not be an open-ended process, and I give Members my commitment that my Department will move swiftly to respond to the recommendations, starting with accepting No 106. I shall set up a small consultative working group to discuss redress once I have met some of the families, which I shall do as soon as we agree dates.

We have started work on the recommendations, and we shall continue at pace. Some have financial implications and will need detailed consideration. Our considerations will include identifying interfaces or alignment between the inquiry's recommendations and other work already being progressed by my Department. For example, work is progressing on the introduction of a duty of candour. At its core, the work is focused on strengthening a culture of openness and honesty, and work is being taken forward on two separate pieces of legislation. The first is on an organisational duty of candour for Northern Ireland that will place a legal duty on the HSC to be open and honest in defined circumstances where harm has occurred. Secondly, we are participating in the UK-wide Public Office (Accountability) Bill or Hillsborough law, which will place individual statutory duties on all public officials, including those in the HSC, to act in the public interest. Work is also under way in other areas, such as the implementation of the new learning disability service model, which will provide a lifetime model of responsive services for those with learning disabilities. Work is also ongoing to implement the recommendations set out in the ‘Equity of Access and Outcome’ report, which examined the future role of registered nurses in learning disability in supporting people with learning disabilities.

Let me re-emphasise: the safeguarding of those who are most vulnerable in our society is a key focus. That has been demonstrated by the adult safeguarding Bill that is progressing through the Assembly. Members will be aware that the Bill's progress was paused earlier in the year to enable the findings from the inquiry to be published and considered in conjunction with the Bill. The work will now restart. I commit to Members that the Department will consider the implications of the inquiry's recommendations on the proposals in the Bill and will ensure that any necessary adjustments are made without delay.

Finally, while the inquiry's report helps us understand the failings of the past and provides a road map for the work needed to address those issues, it is vital that we now move forward as a health and social care system and, importantly, as a society into a safer, more inclusive and accepting future for those who are most vulnerable. To that end, I am convening a summit at the end of June that will bring together Health and Social Care leaders, including trust chairs and chief executives, as well as the chairs of the newly established patient safety and quality committees. At the summit, I will set out my vision and expectations for our collective responsibility as an HSC system to strengthen patient safety, culture, governance and accountability.

I shall bring Members further details and updates on progress against the recommendations as my Department and the wider HSC system work through the report. I commend the statement to the House.

Mr McGrath: The past week has reopened wounds for many families that should never have been inflicted in the first place. The inquiry has exposed one of the gravest adult safeguarding failures that we have seen, but it has also exposed a system that repeatedly failed to listen to families. One of the most disturbing findings from the inquiry is that the families were not believed. Across our health service today there are campaign groups, whistle-blowers and families raising concerns who feel they are meeting the same culture of defensiveness and resistance. What evidence can you point to that the system has genuinely changed? Why should those people be confident that they will not have to endure the battle that the Muckamore families faced?

Mr Nesbitt: I very much agree with a lot of the sentiment that the Member has expressed. It should not have happened. I think that we all agree that families should have been listened to. I also think that we all agree that the Department of Health, the Belfast Trust or any other trust, the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA), the Patient and Client Council (PCC) and any of the bodies delivering across the Health and Social Care system exist for the benefit of patients, service users and our society.

I am particularly disturbed to read the stinging criticism from the chair about the adversarial nature of the Belfast Trust's response. To my mind, it is acceptable to protect the integrity and reputation of an organisation when it is under unfair attack — unfair attack. However, there was nothing to defend about Muckamore: it was evil. Evil was perpetrated by healthcare workers who were there to look after the people whom they were attacking.

There is a big deal of work to be done in trying to restore public confidence, and I get that. I am also conscious that we are talking about a system that has 75,000 or 76,000 people in it, so we face a massive challenge to make sure that not one of them ever does anything that they should not do.

Mr McGuigan (The Chairperson of the Committee for Health): Minister, the inquiry found systematic abuse, neglect and serious governance failure at Muckamore Abbey Hospital over many years — failures that were not isolated incidents but reflected systematic issues across leadership, staffing, safeguarding and oversight that resulted in decades of physical and psychological abuse. You have given an abject apology on behalf of the entire health system today: that apology is absolutely necessary, but it is not sufficient. Families now expect three things: accountability for those responsible; full implementation of the inquiry's recommendations; and clear evidence that vulnerable people in our health system are safer today than they were yesterday. Can you tell us that those three asks will be met for those families?

Mr Nesbitt: I agree with the Member that those are the right asks, and I will work tirelessly to try to implement them. I was struck by how Mr Kark makes a conclusion that the trust was about the business of assurance rather than reassurance. In other words, at board level, they were asking the question, "Is there are a process in place?", but, when they were told, "Yes, there is", they effectively moved on to the next agenda item rather than saying, "What is that process delivering? What outcomes are we getting? Is it working to protect people?". There was a lack of curiosity, frankly, and Mr Kark refers to a lack of curiosity in the report.

When it comes to how we want to do things differently, we will listen to what the report says, and, rather than review abuse on a case-by-case basis, we will look for trends to see whether the issue is systemic and, if it is, do something about it. I have mentioned the two things that we are doing: the patient safety and quality committees that are being set up in each of the trusts; and the adult safeguarding Bill that is going through the House. We will learn lessons and adjust the Bill accordingly.

All I can say to the Member is that I promise a renewed and more laser-like focus on abuse, not just on a case-by-case basis but on how it is being perpetrated on a systematic basis. I hope that that has stopped, but we cannot rely on hope. We have to have systems and structures in place to make sure that we nip it in the bud.

Mrs Dodds: Thank you, Minister. The Muckamore inquiry report demonstrates a shameful period for our health service, and no one involved can, in any shape or form, come out of this with any kind of credibility. In your statement this morning, we have an apology, but it lacks detail about the specific actions that you will take to ensure that there is accountability. One senior member representing the autistic community said that your statement was an absolute slap in the face to the many autistic people who had been subjected to immense harm.

Minister, how will you ensure accountability not just for past wrongs, including the criminal charges, which, of course, are a separate issue, but for the managers who turned their back, did not look and did not want to find out what was happening in Muckamore hospital? How will you give accountability for the future to ensure that it never happens again?

Mr Nesbitt: I am unaware of the statement and very much regret that it has not landed well with the people — the group — to whom the Member refers.

When it comes to ensuring that it never happens again, I think that Mr Kark has tried to give us the road map with those 106 recommendations. We will not take six months to decide whether we implement them. Over the weekend, I went through those recommendations, and I have now categorised them across three columns. There are some — in fact, around 66 — that we can action very quickly. There are others where I feel that I need to consult officials to better understand the implications should we go ahead with implementation. Then there are ones that will need exploring because they will require resource and funding. That is not an impediment; it is simply a challenge. Of course, there are a couple that I cannot commit to implementing: recommendation 88 is for the PSNI and recommendation 89 is for the Department of Justice. Another one, recommendation 101, will involve the Housing Executive and the Department for Communities. That leaves 103 recommendations for the Health and Social Care system. We will press ahead, as a matter of urgency, with an open mind and a positive attitude towards implementation. That is how I intend to try to give the assurance that the Member seeks.

Miss McAllister: Minister, thank you for coming here and making the statement. However, if you will allow me, Mr Speaker: many of the families of children and patients who were in Muckamore Abbey Hospital are sitting in the Gallery. In particular, I pay significant tribute to Glynn Brown, who was instrumental in uncovering a lot of the abuse that happened there. We also pay tribute to Timmy Jones, the son of our Alliance colleague, Mervyn Jones, and Dawn Jones. Many families have worked hard over the years to uncover abuse and speak up for many people who do not have a voice.

The inquiry report raises serious questions about leadership and governance in the Belfast Trust during the period, a period when the hyponatraemia inquiry was ongoing. Members of that trust leadership now hold substantial roles in your Department and other trusts.

Mr Speaker: Miss McAllister, please come to a question.

Miss McAllister: How will you ensure that there is proper accountability for senior figures who have moved around trusts and into your Department who were involved not only in this issue but in the issues relating to the hyponatraemia inquiry?

Mr Nesbitt: I thank the Member for pointing out that there are families in the Gallery: I was unaware of that. I have said that I want to meet them, hopefully this week. If they have time after the session, I would like to come up, say hello and start that conversation.

Yes, there are people working in HSC who lived through the scandal. When it comes to the Belfast Trust, I will repeat that I have a meeting scheduled with the chair and the chief exec later today. That will be the start of trying to come to a determination about whether the trust that I have put in them remains as solid as I have said it is and whether that is a valid position to take.

Mr Chambers: Does the Minister agree that the actions of the heartless and cruel bullies who worked in Muckamore and those who chose to turn a blind eye, as the report identifies, are not, in any shape or form, representative of the many thousands of staff in our Health and Social Care system who provide compassionate and dedicated care daily to the vulnerable, the young, the elderly, the ill and the dying, who all depend on our Health and Social Care system?

Mr Nesbitt: Clearly, the primary harm that that evil has done has been on the patients at Muckamore, their families and their friends. That, rightly, is our primary focus today. However, the Member makes a valid point about the ripples of uncertainty and, potentially, fear, particularly for vulnerable people and their families in the community. Those ripples are out there, and one of the things that that does is undermine trust. Some 75,000 or 76,000 people, I believe, deliver health and social care in this country. The vast majority are entirely trustworthy and are to be commended for what they do. I reassure them that I am with them and do not consider them to be in the same category as the number who perpetrated the evil of Muckamore or, indeed, those who should have identified that evil early and stopped it early.

Mrs Dillon: With your indulgence, a Cheann Comhairle,

I use the opportunity to pay tribute to Geraldine O'Hagan, who was one of the staff members to whom the Minister refers in his statement who paid a high price. In June 2024, Geraldine passed away. However, she survived to hear her statement read at the inquiry. At that time, she was under hospice care for stage 4 cancer. She was the epitome of what healthcare should look like. She cared deeply, and, for that, she was gaslighted and disbelieved, and she and her job were threatened. After news of the Muckamore scandal came out, Geraldine continued to support families, trying to help them to get their loved ones into better independent living circumstances.

Will you give us assurances, Minister, about staff who do their job and speak up? You talked about the many staff members who are overwhelmingly good, yet they did not speak up. The people who were not doing it did not speak up —

Mr Speaker: The question?

Mrs Dillon: — they did not shout; and they did not support the families.

Mr Speaker: Do you have a question, Mrs Dillon?

Mrs Dillon: What assurance can you give us that those who see abuse, neglect and harmful practices will be listened to and protected? Do you agree that now is the time for legislation on an individual duty of candour? We need to see that now. People need to face consequences when they do not act.

Mr Nesbitt: Anybody working in Health and Social Care from me down through the trust boards and down to individuals delivering care in the community and in hospital settings needs to be curious; needs to feel empowered to speak up; and needs to speak up. What happened in Muckamore was that people walked on by. People sat and observed. I am a bit cautious about using emotional language, but, frankly, healthcare workers turned abuse into a spectator sport.

A Member: Shameful.

Mr Nesbitt: It was shameful, so we have to do everything humanly possible to make sure that it never happens again.

There are 106 recommendations. I will not go through them all, but I will take the first and the last. Recommendation 106 is about a small working group to discuss redress. That includes patients, families and service users: I will absolutely do that. Recommendation 1 is:

Yes, that will happen. I will do everything that I can to make sure that the right voices are heard in the right places at the right time.

Mr Robinson: Forgive me, Minister, for also using emotional language, but reading about some of the cruelty towards those incredibly vulnerable people is like reading about what happened in a Nazi concentration camp, except that it was not a concentration camp; it was a First World healthcare facility where people should have been safe and free from such cruelty. How will the proposed adult safeguarding Bill address the weaknesses highlighted in the report, given that we have been told that there is not enough money to implement the Bill fully?

Mr Nesbitt: First of all, we will need time to assess not just the recommendations in their own right but how they will interact with the adult safeguarding Bill. I cannot give you definitive answers to that now. We will need more time than we have had since the publication of the report on 18 June.

The Member also mentioned funding. In my mind, I have divided the 106 recommendations into three categories, one of which is consideration for the funding, but he is talking about funding for the implementation of the Adult Protection Bill. It may be that the publication of the report and the focus on the evil that was perpetrated at Muckamore will ease the purse strings when it comes to how we allocate budget to the Adult Protection Bill as we implement it as an Act.

Mr Donnelly: I thank the Minister for his statement. Minister, as you mentioned in your statement, the inquiry was highly critical of what it describes as "an adversarial and oppositional approach" by the Belfast Trust to the inquiry. Does the Minister accept that that points to a deeper cultural problem in parts of the organisation, where challenge and scrutiny are resisted rather than embraced? What specific actions will he, as Health Minister, take to change that culture? Furthermore, can the Minister confirm whether the Belfast Trust remains in special measures?

Mr Nesbitt: On the latter point, we are talking about the support and intervention framework, which is commonly known as "special measures". I put the Belfast Trust into level 5, which is the highest level. I have brought the trust out of that, because I felt that we were getting somewhere with the leadership. As I have said on a couple of occasions, I am meeting the leadership — the chief executive and the chair — today. I do not rule anything out around further interventions, because it is incredibly serious.

I was quite surprised to read in the report that, after the warning letters went out, there was a response from the trust that ran to well over 400 pages. On reflection, it is a very detailed and complex issue, and we, as a Department, have responded to some queries from the inquiry with a great deal of volume. My focus is not really on the volume but on the tone and attitude and the fact that Mr Kark said that it was adversarial. A public inquiry is not an adversarial platform. I need to better understand why he came to that conclusion and why the trust felt that need. In my view of life, if you get it wrong, put your hand up and fix it; do not try to justify it. We all know that the cover-up is always worse than what happened in the first place.

Ms Flynn: I join you, Minister, and Nuala in welcoming the families who are in the Public Gallery. If we feel horrified when reading the report, how do they feel, given that they have been living through that experience with their loved ones?

Minister, I am working with members of one of the families, and, after everything that they have endured, they remain anxious about whether their loved one is safe and receiving appropriate care and whether she will ever be placed in the appropriate secure accommodation that she requires. That family, like many others, feels that its battle has not ended with the inquiry report, as the families are still fighting for appropriate services and living arrangements for their loved ones. What assurances can you give to those families, who have already been terribly impacted on, that their concerns will be listened to and their loved ones will be placed in the appropriate accommodation that they deserve?

Mr Nesbitt: On the second point, I understand that all but one of the patients have now been allocated a new set of living circumstances. I am also assured that one reason for it having taken longer than it was first anticipated to close Muckamore Abbey Hospital is that such considerable care has been taken in trying to meet the patients' individual needs. I certainly want to test that when I engage with the families.

The Member mentioned how impactful the report is to read for families, never mind us. Again, one question that I want to ask the families is this: in reading the report, were they shocked, or were they just affirmed by seeing what they knew all along in black and white in a report by an official body, such as a public inquiry? Does that justify and affirm what they have been saying all along, particularly given the fact that they started from a position where the authorities said, "We do not believe you"? Scandalous.

Mr Clarke: Following on from Mrs Dodds's comments, given the seriousness of the Muckamore inquiry, the lack of detail in the Minister's statement on the actions that he is going to take is stark and disappointing. In a couple of his responses, he reminded Members of some of the wrongdoing that occurred. All of us will say that what some staff did to some patients was deplorable. I received an email over the weekend from one of the families affected that said that it had been a difficult fight for them, because they felt as though they had not been believed. Some of us who made representations found management to be obstructive and difficult to work with when we raised concerns. Can we hear clearly from the Minister what action he is going to take to address the lack of action on the part of the management that was in place at the time? It is easy to go after those who are in front of the courts, because the courts will decide what is going to happen to them.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Please conclude your question.

Mr Clarke: What, however, is the Minister going to do about the actions of those who obstructively covered up what went on and made the families feel as though they were not believed when they raised their concerns?

Mr Nesbitt: That very issue is a focus for me, and it begins later today when I will meet the chair and the chief executive of the Belfast Trust. I am not interested in letting anybody off the hook. I am absolutely convinced about the guilt here and about the evil that was perpetrated. It was not simply about nurses wandering around the hospital site but about oversight. I have said it before that the board was not curious enough. It was satisfied when it was told that a process was in place. It should, however, have gone on to say, "Yes, but what is it achieving?".

How many instances were there of peer-on-peer abuse? How many instances were there of abuse by patients against staff and vice versa? All those things need to be analysed. Why were they not analysed? What was the motivation behind management's not analysing them? I want to know all those things, and then I will come to conclusions.

Mr Kelly: I thank the Minister for his statement. Accountability and implementation have been mentioned a number of times. The test in all of this will be the speed of implementation. I declare an interest, in that my sister Peggy, who was next in the family to me, spent time in Muckamore many years ago. I mention that because, even then, before there was any ability to gather evidence, there was the misuse of vulnerable people. The secrecy and privacy of institutions that deal with vulnerable people is the worst thing that we need to look at.

Like others, I have worked with a number of families. One particular family is that of Matthew McPeake. Linda Dillon mentioned Geraldine O'Hagan, who was a family liaison social worker who supported and advocated for the McPeake family. I spent some considerable time with Geraldine, a totally dedicated and courageous woman who, as Linda pointed out, died of cancer. It is worth saying that I went to see her in the hospital to ask her —.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): May we have a question?

Mr Kelly: I will finish in one second. When I asked her how she was doing, she said that she wanted me to go and help others. That is what she spent our time together talking about.

We are talking not just about closing Muckamore but about resettling people. I was there during the resettlement period, and there were problems after resettlement as well.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): We need a question, Mr Kelly.

Mr Kelly: My question is this: will the Minister make sure that, going forward, family liaison staff are supported as crucial members of the teams that take care of our most vulnerable people? They are the people who should have been listened to, but they were not.

Mr Nesbitt: I am sad to hear about the Member's experience. In summary, those patients are vulnerable. Some have families who were more than capable of advocating on their behalf, but patients who do not should have advocates and key workers. They should have people who know them, understand them and care for them on every step of their journey.

Mr Frew: My question is simple. The Minister has said today that he is sorry. He has read words from a page and said that he is listening to the Muckamore families. If he was truly listening to the Muckamore families, he would push back against the members of his Department who do not want him to change his legislation from a corporate duty of candour Bill to that of an individual duty of candour, which is the wish not only of the Muckamore families but of the hyponatraemia families. Will the Minister change his Bill from organisational duty of candour to individual duty of candour? If he fails to do so, I will bring forward a Bill in early autumn.

Mr Nesbitt: As I have said, we will not only advance the Adult Protection Bill but introduce an organisational duty of candour Bill. Alongside that, we will support the UK-wide Public Office (Accountability) Bill, commonly known as the Hillsborough law, which includes individual duties on every person working in the health and social care system. That is a valid position. The Member takes a different but equally valid position. That is fine; I understand. When the Bill on the duty of candour comes to the House, the Member will try to amend it or, indeed, will bring forward his own Bill. That is perfectly within his political rights.

Mrs Guy: Minister, the Muckamore scandal had an impact on some of our most vulnerable adults who had conditions such as autism and learning disabilities. Many were unable to speak up for themselves and therefore relied on others to do so. It is important that you refer to conditions such as autism, which are referenced clearly in the report but were mentioned not once in your statement. Unfortunately, we know of other instances of vulnerable communities being failed by our health service. The most obvious example that comes to my mind is the children's respite and short breaks service. What are you doing specifically to ensure that the failures seen in Muckamore, such as a substandard level of care, lack of governance and families' concerns simply being ignored, are not repeated elsewhere in the system?

Mr Nesbitt: In the report, Mr Kark and his colleagues do not make recommendations specific to the Belfast Trust, which owned and ran the Muckamore Abbey Hospital. Rather, of the 106 recommendations in the report, 63 — way over half — are for the health and social care trusts, plural. That gives some indication of where Mr Kark thinks we should go to ensure that it never happens again. On my initial reading, I am pretty much on the same page as he is.

Mr Gildernew: I acknowledge the families who are here, many of whom I was proud to stand alongside and campaign with throughout the scandal, including in the fight that they had just to have the public inquiry held. That needs to be acknowledged.

Minister, the inquiry has been highly critical of the Belfast Trust's approach, raising concerns about its attitude towards families and its approach to the inquiry, which has caused families further hurt. You said that you will meet the trust this afternoon: if you are not satisfied with its response, are you prepared to impose independent oversight or take further action to restore public confidence?

Mr Nesbitt: I am absolutely prepared to take further action to restore public confidence, if I feel that that step is necessary. The Member will know that, with regard to the Belfast Trust, I have previously taken what could be regarded as decisive steps. I am not afraid to do so again, if I deem that necessary.

Mr Buckley: Minister, the administration of health and social care is probably the most pivotal and priority issue in devolved competence. I am sure that, like me, many Members and, indeed, the general public are increasingly concerned at the growing number of damning inquiry outcomes, investigations and reports, the potential need for redress and the fact that some in senior leadership seem to go through a revolving door in different parts of the Department. When it comes to action, where is the implementation of the new learning disability service model at present? We have often heard about that, but we have had no sight of the detail. Is the Minister prepared to release it in draft form?

Mr Nesbitt: I take the Member's point about a revolving door. However, we are bringing in fresh ideas and fresh faces, such as Steve Spoerry, the chief executive of the Southern Trust, and Mike Farrar, the permanent secretary in the Department of Health.

The different ideas that they have brought in have been more than welcome.

We are analysing the responses received during the public consultation on the learning disability service model. We need to ensure that the lessons arising from the inquiry help to shape the future direction of the learning disability service model. We need to provide a long-term framework for the transformation and improvement of adult learning disability services. The Member will not be surprised to hear that implementation will be phased and prioritised over a number of years. Once we have finalised the model, we need a detailed costing exercise to be undertaken, as well as a strategic delivery plan. I am not committing to publishing anything at this stage, but we will follow the process, and I will encourage the relevant officials to do so at pace.

Ms Mulholland: I thank the Minister. I associate myself with the comments made by my colleague Nuala McAllister about Glynn Brown. I have also been thinking quite a lot about Timothy, Mervyn and Timothy's mum, Dawn.

Minister, the scandal is yet another example of families being failed when they raise concerns about standards of care. The drawn-out process for investigations of serious adverse incidents results in patients and families waiting far too long for accountability and the necessary improvements in their care, and, all the while, other incidents could be happening. What will you do to ensure that trusts complete that process faster whilst ensuring that patients and families are brought along and retain confidence in the process throughout? Additionally, will you examine whether the resettlement scheme has worked? I know that, for some, it has not.

Mr Nesbitt: On that last point, officials have assured me that exceptional care and a lot of time are taken to try to meet the individual needs of patients when they are being resettled, but I look forward to starting the conversations on the other side, as it were, by talking to families immediately after this session.

I referred in my statement to a health summit. I inform Members that there is one more public inquiry report to come: I believe that Christine Smith KC will publish her report on urology on Wednesday. I expect that that will also be a blow to the Health and Social Care system. That is the last of the current series of public inquiries, so that will be an appropriate time at which to call that health summit, where we will have the leadership across HSC in one room and I will have the opportunity to say to them, "Enough's enough. The line is drawn. Be human. Deliver care compassionately. Stop the scandals. Do your job".

Mr O'Toole: Minister, thank you for the statement. Although some of them have left the Chamber, I, too, welcome the families and those affected here today. We can but imagine the trauma that they and their loved ones went through at Muckamore. You, Minister, rightly called it "evil". You also said that you hoped that the abuse had stopped, but there is significant concern, as Sian Mulholland and others have mentioned, that the subsequent resettlement of patients or care users has been inappropriate and, indeed, has led to abuse. Someone from my constituency whose son was at Muckamore and had two subsequent failed placements, which led to reviews, raised with me their serious concerns about replacement. Will you meet that family and those families to discuss those ongoing concerns and their wider questions about accountability in the Belfast Trust? We welcome the fact that you are here today and have issued such strong language about accountability, but rebuilding trust and digging even further into what went wrong will be an ongoing process.

Mr Nesbitt: Having thanked the leader of the Opposition for making this possible, I now wonder for how long he has sat on that information, rather than bringing it to me. However, we will have that conversation.

I will assure myself as best I can about the quality of resettlement and, more broadly, about whether abuse is happening. I have to ask, when you think about 75,000-plus people delivering health and social care daily, is it possible that physical, psychological or mental abuse, not on the scale of Muckamore Abbey, is happening? Human nature dictates that that is highly possible, so we have to keep working and working at the system and at the culture. It is not about structures. As Rafael Bengoa said, it is about systems, not structures. It is about the systems and the culture that is embedded in people who deliver health and social care. Am I concerned that an isolated incident of abuse could be happening as we speak? Of course I am. Can you guarantee that it will never happen? No, you cannot. Can you pledge to do everything that you can to prevent it and to stop it when it happens? Yes.

Mr Carroll: I pay tribute to all of the families who have spoken out about Muckamore and the abuse, especially my constituents and Alicia Fox, Laura Sharp and their families. The Minister mentioned the trust. Does he have any concerns about the approach of its legal team? My understanding is that, at best, it has been obstructive towards the families and that it has probably been worse than that. It is often said that a fish rots from the head, and I believe that the rot in Muckamore started with the leadership at the Belfast Trust and at Department level. As was touched on, there is huge concern, Minister, about accountability at senior levels of the health service. People at the heart of the health service and the Department from the time of the events of the Muckamore inquiry have been rewarded with well-paid jobs and, in some cases, royal titles. Does he have any concern about that, and, if he does, what action will he take?

Mr Nesbitt: I am not across the last point that the Member has made. Am I concerned about the trust taking an overly legalistic approach to it? Of course I am, because that is what Mr Kark reports in the inquiry report: that it was adversarial. Again, it is not about the volume of response, which is probably justifiable, but about the tone and the attitude. Did the trust make a decision that it had to protect the trust's reputation above safety and concern for the patients? That is unacceptable. I have seen it happen before in organisations where things go wrong and abuse takes place, and the first thing that the leadership does is say, "Let's form the wagons in a circle and let's not do anything about it". In fact, in one organisation that I was part of, I was made aware of historical abuse, and I phoned the father and introduced myself and asked how his son was. There was a long pause at the other end of the phone. I heard something that I thought was sobbing, and it was. The man, when he got himself together, said, "You are the first person in 10 years from that organisation to enquire about my son". If that is the sort of attitude that anybody in Health and Social Care is going to take, it is just not acceptable. I will not ignore it, I will not sit on it and I will be decisive.

Mr K Buchanan: Minister, I was contacted on Friday by a lady whose brother was in Muckamore — a lady who did not tell her story. Now the report has come out and sparked a degree of need for her to speak. I use the word "need", but that is maybe not the best word. What can that lady do now? What is her avenue at this stage to speak, and to whom should she speak?

Mr Nesbitt: I would like to think that the Department will discuss with the trust and any other relevant organisation, including the Patient and Client Council, which, of course, is there for such circumstances, and we can put in place some protocol for anybody who feels that they regret that they did not take the opportunity or did not have the opportunity to engage with the inquiry. When abuse occurs, it is always important that people are acknowledged and have the opportunity not just to tell their story but to have their story listened to and acknowledged by the right people. If the Member's constituent is looking for an immediate fix as far as being heard is concerned, I suggest that she contact the Patient and Client Council today.

Mrs Cameron: I welcome the unreserved apology for the appalling abuse at Muckamore and the acknowledgement of the profound systemic failures in care, oversight and trust. Given the commitment to act swiftly, will the Minister provide a clear and detailed timeline for when the key recommendations, particularly those relating to redress, safeguarding reforms and accountability measures, will be fully implemented?

Mr Nesbitt: It is not possible — I am surprised that the Member thinks that it is — to give a defined timeline for all 106 recommendations. Some are not even within my gift. Recommendation 88 is for the Police Service of Northern Ireland; recommendation 89 is for the Department of Justice; and recommendation 101 involves the Housing Executive and the Department for Communities. As I said, I have put the recommendations into three categories. I believe that the great majority are, basically, actionable immediately, and there are some whose resource implications I do not sufficiently understand. There are 27 that I want to explore with officials — I will do that at pace — and there are at least 11 that need exploration because of the funding and resource implications.

Once again, Mr Kark's recommendation 2 gives me up to six months to respond. My Department and I and everybody in HSC will not take until Christmas to respond to the recommendations.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Members, that concludes questions on the statement.

Mr O'Toole: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. For the record, as the Minister asked about it, I received the correspondence last evening, so it would not have been possible to have brought it to him. For the record, again, the word "harm" was used by the individual about what her family member had experienced, not "abuse". I welcome the fact that the Minister has engaged and wants to hear more about those experiences. I wanted to clarify that point on the record.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The point is on the record. Members, in recent days, advice on the relevance and accuracy of points of order has been issued.

Mr O'Toole: I beg to move

Mr O'Dowd (The Minister of Finance): On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. My understanding is that the Speaker has made rulings on respect for the House in relation to debates in the House. The leader of the Opposition has complained previously to the Speaker about interventions that I have made in the media prior to debates. The leader of the Opposition has been in the media over the past 24 to 48 hours regarding the motion, speaking about it and engaging in detail on it, but I as Finance Minister cannot enter that debate, given the rulings of the Speaker. Will the Speaker's Office examine how appropriate it is for the leader of the Opposition to act in that way?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Yes, of course. The appropriate advice will be issued to you by the Speaker's Office.

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.

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 O'Toole, please open the debate on the motion.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I suppose that I am bound to respond to the Minister's point of order. First, I am flattered that the Minister thinks that the official Opposition should adhere to precisely the same obligations as Ministers with regard to Assembly business. In fact, I am surprised by the idea that no Member can ever discuss a bit of business that is in the Order Paper. That seems to be a slightly surreal interpretation of rules. Nevertheless, I am sure that we will get a ruling on that. I hope that, in future, that means that the official Opposition in Dáil Éireann will not be saying "boo" about its motions before they are tabled before the Dáil. I look forward to seeing that. I also hope that we never hear any other announcements being trailed in the media.

I move to the business of today, however, because it is important business. This is the final Opposition day of the summer term, and, by now, we should have agreed a Budget. We should be scrutinising a Budget. In fact, we should have already scrutinised a Budget. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 — the legislation that, effectively, puts in place the rules for how this place operates and has done since the Good Friday Agreement — is clear: a Budget must be agreed by the Executive before the end of the financial year; that is, before 1 April. That did not happen. For nearly three months, that law has been — I do not know whether you say "broken the law" but the Executive have been in breach of that law.

What is supposed to happen after that, once a Budget is agreed, is that a Budget Bill is written, and that provides legal authorisation for spending, alongside a Main Estimates document that sets out the overall spending envelopes for individual Departments. None of that has happened; yet we are days from summer recess. This place will break up at the end of next week. At that point, we will be hurtling towards a 1 August deadline. At the 1 August deadline, the provisions set out in the Northern Ireland Act, as spelled out by the Finance Minister's own permanent secretary in the letter that he sent to other permanent secretaries in April, will kick in. That will mean that the Executive will legally be able to spend only 95% of last year's Budget. That is 95%. That is a 5% cut not even in the proposed draft Budget that the Minister himself introduced in January but in last year's Budget. That would represent brutal cuts, but that, currently, is the legal default that we are hurtling towards.

That is a factual legal position that the Opposition are setting out today. That should not be a surprise to anybody, and it should not be controversial that we state it. I am happy to give way to the Minister or, indeed, to any Member of an Executive party who wishes to tell me why I am factually wrong about that legal position. It is in a letter set out by the permanent secretary of the Department of Finance. That is an unacceptable position. It should not be controversial to say that a devolved Government refusing to set a Budget is unacceptable.

I will come to the fiscal position, the conversations — or the lack of them — with the UK Government, and the relative funding position of the Executive. I want to state firmly and clearly, however, that it is absurd and unacceptable for a devolved Government simply to refuse to set a Budget. The context is chaos in London. We have had a decade of chaos from successive British Governments, going right back to 2016 and the Brexit referendum, and for years before that we had austerity. Often referred to in this Chamber, rightly, is the fact that, at Westminster, decisions are made that have huge and often very negative consequences for people and public services in this region. The correct respond to the chaos visited by London is not simply to say, "God, isn't London chaotic? Aren't they awful?" but to say, "Yes, they are chaotic. Yes, we would make different choices".

That is all the more reason for us to take responsibility here, set a Budget, show leadership to the public of the North and not simply let the chaos in Westminster dictate terms for our people and public services. Yet the latter has been the consistent position of the current Executive and, indeed, previous Executives led by Sinn Féin and the DUP. Of course, for half of the past decade — this decade of Brexit-induced chaos — we did not even have an Executive. They were not even here to set a Budget, so it had to be set for them in London, whether we liked it or not, contributing directly to the decline in public services and the failure to deliver major capital projects, such as the A5 and Casement Park, which would be much further progressed had the Executive not been collapsed a decade ago.

All too often, however, our response to chaos in London is to say, "God, look, that proves that London is chaotic". Yes, but we should take more responsibility here. We should show leadership to the public whom we serve, but, yet again today, the response that we see to chaos and, indeed, cynicism from the UK Government is chaos and cynicism from the Executive. As I said, the legal position is clear. In not setting a Budget, the Executive are in breach of the law. I understand, and the Opposition agree with, the Minister of Finance and the Executive's saying that they need the best possible financial settlement. To ward off any accusations that we are simply taking the Brits' side, as it were, let me be clear that we support the Executive in getting the best funding possible from the UK Government. We support that and will make the case for it. Indeed, we did so to the Secretary of State when he was here the other day.

No claim for better funding from London justifies what is happening now, however. The Executive cannot say, on the one hand, that the UK Government are not giving us enough money, although they have more than a point when they say that, and, on the other hand, "Our reaction to that is to cut our own Budget even further". It is cutting off our nose to spite our face to cut our Budget by 5% because we do not like the Budget settlement that we have. The best way in which to make a better argument for an improved Budget settlement — a longer-term fiscal framework that works, which is what the Minister and his predecessors said that they wanted — is to take responsibility here, set a Budget and priorities and challenge the UK Government to fund us properly to do transformation. Instead, we invite cynicism. There is cynicism from the UK Government. Yes, the Minister is right when he talks about the Treasury's open-book exercise being, in large measure, an exercise in cynicism, but what is our response to that? It is simply to create more chaos by refusing to set a Budget.

As the official Opposition, we have set out today what the consequences of that will be. These are not made-up numbers. We have not extrapolated them using fancy equipment. We have simply looked at the numbers in the Department of Finance's permanent secretary's letter to Departments in April and at the numbers in the Fiscal Council sustainability report that was published last week. The Fiscal Council states that, legally, the Executive have £1 billion less to spend as a result of their not setting a Budget. That is the result of an Executive decision, and it is clearly an unacceptable situation. If it continues to be the case that the Executive do not set a Budget, what are the consequences? It could mean our having hundreds fewer police officers, nurses and teachers than could otherwise be recruited. To be clear, I am saying not that people will be sacked but that we will have much less to spend on recruitment. We will have much less to spend on vital infrastructure, from water to road to rail, and much less to spend on transforming our public services. Those are facts.

Do the Executive have a point when they say that the Scottish and Welsh Governments are funded further above their level of need? The Fiscal Council says that they do. We are not disputing that today — we are not arguing against that point — and that is why we will not divide the House on the Sinn Féin amendment, because it is not an unreasonable point to make. What is unreasonable, however, is to respond to that situation by simply refusing to set a Budget. I have never heard a Scottish or Welsh Government — any devolved Administration in Holyrood or Cardiff — challenge their funding settlement from Westminster and say, "We're simply going to refuse to set a Budget". It is not an acceptable response to the cynicism and chaos from the UK Government simply to create more chaos and cynicism in Northern Ireland. That is not acceptable. I need someone to explain to me how imposing a £1 billion cut on our Budget because the Executive want more money from the UK Government works, because I simply do not understand it.

We will hold the Executive to account for that failure. When the Finance Minister launched his draft Budget earlier this year, he said that it could be transformational. He said that, ten out of ten, a Budget would be agreed. Neither has turned out to be true, or certainly not yet. There are other Ministers who talk out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to taking responsibility, because they are clearly not taking responsibility for agreeing a Budget. Ultimately, the public send us here to take responsibility. They know that we could use more money and that there are constraints within which a devolved Government operate. They know all those things — they are not stupid — and we, as the Opposition, have never tried to gaslight them, which I was accused earlier of doing. We have never tried to gaslight the public. We have always been honest. The only thing that we have asked the Executive for is honesty with the public in return: set clear priorities and show ambition, but be honest with people and take responsibility. That is not happening. The Executive are failing the people of Northern Ireland by refusing to take responsibility. We are drifting into a summer of chaos.

We support calls for more money from the UK Government. We will join the Executive in making those calls — let me be clear about that in order to ward off any inaccurate slurs from Executive party representatives today — but what we will not do is stand aside and passively accept Executive-created chaos. Take responsibility, and we will join the Executive in pressing the UK Government for more support. The status quo is not acceptable. I commend the motion to the House.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): I call Jemma Dolan to move the amendment.

Miss Dolan: I beg to move

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Member will have 10 minutes to propose the amendment and five minutes to make a winding-up speech. All other Members who wish to speak in the debate will have five minutes.

Please open the debate on the amendment.

Miss Dolan: Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

The failure to agree a multi-year Budget is a matter of deep concern. I welcome the first part of the motion that calls on the British Government to engage with the Executive in order to get a financial agreement that will ensure:

However, the second part of the motion is profoundly flawed and contradictory. On the one hand, it welcomes the efforts of local Ministers to press for more funding for public services, while, on the other hand, it states that the Executive are purposely deciding to "impose further austerity" by not agreeing to a Budget. That is why we have tabled our amendment.

If Mr O'Toole supports the need to put maximum pressure on the British Government, he should join others in the Chamber in presenting a united front to challenge Westminster, rather than taking another opportunity for political point-scoring. The fiscal pressures facing the Executive did not emerge overnight. They are the result of years of chronic underfunding by successive British Governments and a funding model that has consistently failed to recognise the real needs of people here. That is the root cause of the problem. Public services cannot be expected to plan effectively, invest strategically or deliver long-term transformation when they are forced to operate on a year-to-year basis and under the constant threat of financial uncertainty.

Last week's Fiscal Council sustainability report reinforces what Sinn Féin has been saying for years. The report highlights the scale of the challenge facing our institutions and points clearly to the fact that the Executive are operating from a lower funding base than comparable Administrations in Scotland and Wales. That reality cannot be ignored. Our public services are under immense pressure. Health workers, teachers and community organisations are all being asked to do more with less. Communities that have already endured years of austerity continue to feel the impact. That is why I support the Finance Minister in his efforts to continue to press the British Government for a fair financial settlement and to develop a long-term funding strategy that reflects the realities facing our communities.

The Executive must be provided with the resources necessary to meet the needs of workers, families, businesses and communities. Funding arrangements must be based on objective need, not political convenience. The people of the North deserve the same opportunity to access quality public services as citizens elsewhere on these islands. There is an onus on us as elected representatives to deliver better front-line services. However, we cannot get away from the fact that we are a devolved region with limited fiscal powers. Almost all our funding comes through the block grant. The British Government must therefore recognise their responsibility as those with the taxation powers and provide the resources required to address need, drive transformation and support economic growth.

The current Budget situation further vindicates why more people are questioning the constitutional status quo. Irish reunification would mean people here having locally elected representatives who would have more control over how public money is raised and distributed, instead of being negatively impacted on by tax decisions taken in London that are often used to benefit the wealthy or to fund militarisation. That context also needs to form the basis of our discussions when it comes to debates on our public finances and public services. I look forward to continuing that debate in the time ahead. I urge Members to support the amendment.

Ms Forsythe: As we speak about the Budget once again, I make the point that everyone here accepts that there is not enough money. Northern Ireland is being asked to deliver first-class public services with second-class funding. The gap between what our hospitals, our schools and our front-line services need and what the Treasury provides has been growing year after year. That is no longer sustainable, and it is impossible to make the books balance without additional funding.

Westminster cannot keep expecting Northern Ireland to do more with less. However, today's Opposition motion and its framing in the media is gaslighting the public. I am glad that the leader of the Opposition heard some of my comments on that this morning. The SDLP has been on the airwaves portraying itself as having discovered some great unknown: that we may be facing £1 billion of cuts.

The Opposition say that that will happen only if the Executive fail to set a Budget by 1 August, but the truth is that, if the Executive were to set a Budget now with the funds that are currently available to them, the £1 billion pressure would be signed up to and we would have to make £1 billion of cuts or raise £1 billion of revenue in this financial year. That is completely unrealistic and would decimate our public services.

Are the Opposition really saying to the Executive, "Agree a Budget now, rather than wait until the looming date of 1 August"? Are they saying that the SDLP supports £1 billion of cuts to Northern Ireland public services in 2026-27 that would see outworkings such as the loss of 6,000 teachers? The SDLP has not given many answers on where the money would come from. There is no constructive opposition here. Once again, the Opposition stand on the sidelines and criticise the Executive without bringing an alternative to the table. Where is the SDLP's draft alternative Budget for now with the funding that is currently available? What cuts does it suggest? Some specifics would be great. Would it make cuts to teachers, healthcare staff or the PSNI? The SDLP is on the airwaves slamming the fact that those things might be cut if we cannot agree a Budget by 1 August. Realistically, however, those are the things that Ministers would be signing up to if we were to agree a Budget today.

The Opposition should be honest with people. They need to move away from sound-bite politics and get serious. What are they actually doing? The SDLP has mentioned the current chaos in Westminster, yet, in the 2024 general election campaign, it boasted of the great influence that it would have in Westminster through its relationship with the SDLP's sister party, Labour, with which it sits on the same Benches. What has it used that influence for? There have been no constructive outcomes for Northern Ireland's finances and no constructive opposition. There is a pattern there.

We want to see a multi-year Budget in place to support our public services on a long-term, sustainable basis, but we need the right funding model in place to do that. We will continue to make the case for that and will strive for efficiencies and the transformation of the current delivery of our public services. We regularly meet the Government. Gordon Lyons recently met the Chancellor to seek a better deal for Northern Ireland, particularly in borrowing powers to build houses. The current drama in the Labour Party does not help us, but it will not deter us. When John O'Dowd laid the multi-year Budget earlier in the year, I was one of the first to criticise it. The Education Minister set out exactly what it would mean for education if those cuts were to be put in place. Ministers have fed back that the Executive have sat around the table and agreed that that Budget cannot be brought forward. It is not a Budget that prioritises things such as social housing, as there is insufficient capital allocation to enable the Communities Minister to meet the housing targets set out in the Programme for Government. The Budget is wholly inadequate to deliver the SEN agenda. As I said, Minister Givan has outlined the potential for mass compulsory teacher redundancies numbering 6,700. By the end of the multi-year period, the shortfall in Justice would equate to the combined annual budgets of the Prison Service, the Probation Board, the Youth Justice Agency (YJA) and Forensic Science Northern Ireland.

We believe in constructive solutions. The DUP will continue to work at all levels, including alongside Executive colleagues. Our MP team will continue to work alongside the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee to secure, as soon as possible, a long-term funding package that is meaningful to Northern Ireland, enables a multi-year Budget to be delivered and is sustainable to enable us to deliver high-quality public services for the people in Northern Ireland. We believe that the amendment improves the motion and will support it.

Mr Dickson: We cannot remain in a state of suspension for ever. The uncertainty caused by the absence of a multi-year Budget is plunging our public services into disarray and depriving us of key economic opportunities, holding our communities back. The draft Budget previously proposed by the Minister simply is not workable. Departments report a £700 million funding gap in year 1. By the end of a three-year Budget cycle, public services will face swingeing cuts and austerity.

Take the Department of Justice. That Department alone would be underfunded to the tune of £215 million by 2028-29. That is the equivalent of the entire budget of the Prison Service, the Probation Board, the Youth Justice Agency and Forensic Science. The Assembly faces stark choices, and agreeing the draft Budget as it stands is not a silver bullet, nor is it sustainable for us to continue in the absence of a Budget. It is vital, therefore, that we break the cycle of crisis and collapse that has been destroying our public finances. Stop-go government, austerity, Brexit, the global pandemic, reckless overspending by Ministers and an almost allergic disposition when it comes to making transformative decisions over the past decade have deprived us of key opportunities to place the Executive on a more sustainable footing. As a result, we have some of the longest hospital waiting lists in western Europe, stubbornly high levels of economic inactivity, failing infrastructure and unacceptable housing waiting lists. Simply put, it cannot continue.

When the Assembly was restored, the Alliance Party made a clear case to the Government that a Finance Minister and an independent commission should be jointly appointed to assess Northern Ireland's finances and funding formula. That was not taken forward, and it was a missed opportunity. Again today, our focus is not on party politics or point-scoring but, rather, on solutions. We have a short window of opportunity in which we can change the trajectory of our finances. The Alliance Party is simply proposing this: a clear plan to tackle the cost of division, duplication and waste in our system; an Executive-wide commitment to public service transformation, particularly in Health and Education, our two highest-spending Departments; a rapid review of our funding formula to ensure that Northern Ireland gets a fair deal on its public finances when compared with other devolved nations; and a willingness around the Executive table to look at progressive revenue-raising, ensuring that those who have the broadest shoulders in our society bear the fairer costs, without placing additional burdens on hard-pressed families.

I will look at each of those in turn. The cost of division is estimated to be upwards of £800 million per year, which is money that we can ill-afford to squander, and the Alliance Party's previous proposal was that we put a statutory duty on the Fiscal Council to have due regard to the cost of division in its work. Secondly, progress on public service transformation has simply not been rapid enough. The public service transformation board has made a promising start over the past two years. However, it needs to go further and faster. Thirdly, our funding formula. After years of false narratives that Northern Ireland politicians were guilty of begging-bowl politics, the UK Treasury finally conceded in negotiations that Northern Ireland had been underfunded. Just last week, the Fiscal Council confirmed that Northern Ireland will be short-changed anywhere between £1 billion and £3 billion compared with our counterparts in Scotland and Wales. To be clear, the ask is not for special treatment but for equal treatment with the rest of the United Kingdom. Finally, while revenue-raising will not plug the hole in our finances, it can and would improve the Executive's credibility. Proposals are already on the table around changes to our rating system that would ensure that it is fairer, progressive and consistent with the Executive's priorities.

On public services, we deserve consistent, stable and accountable leadership over the medium to long term, rather than the boom and bust that we have experienced over previous decades. Collapsed Executives and political crises, followed by Secretaries of State flying in with chequebooks, are not the solution for public services in Northern Ireland. If we are serious about sustainable finances, the time has come for democratic renewal and reforms to Stormont to fix our broken politics. It is time to remove the vetoes and return the place to the service of working families across Northern Ireland.

Mr Kingston: I rise as a DUP member of the Committee for Finance. I hope that all parties across the Assembly agree that the funding that we receive from Treasury is not enough to meet our level of need in Northern Ireland. However, there is clearly a difference in what the response to that should be.

The SDLP, in its motion, criticises our Executive for failing to agree a multi-year Budget based on our current funding from Treasury. The SDLP should be clear on what agreeing to that Budget would mean in the current financial year. It would mean agreeing to a Budget more than £1 billion below our combined departmental needs for the current year, particularly in the public-facing Departments of Health, Education and Justice. It would mean agreeing to implement cuts of £1 billion that would involve substantial job losses, closure of services, poorer education provision and longer waiting lists for health. Is that what the SDLP wants? Perhaps, as an Opposition party, that is what it wants in order to increase public discontent. The SDLP is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. At the same time as it criticises the Executive for not implementing the current block grant, it says that the block grant is not sufficient. The SDLP cannot have it both ways. Perhaps the SDLP could do more to persuade its sister party at Westminster to increase the block grant to the Executive and the people of Northern Ireland. The gap between what our public services need and what Treasury provides is growing year-on-year, and it is no longer feasible to make the books balance without additional funding.

The permanent secretary recently confirmed to the Finance Committee that, without an agreed Budget by 1 August, Departments can allocate only 95% of last year's Budget. However, it is nonsense and scaremongering by the SDLP to claim, as it does in the motion, that the final 5% could not be allocated subsequently. That is a fallacy; of course it could be unlocked.

Last week, the Finance Committee received important figures comparing the funding from Treasury per person in each of the four nations of the United Kingdom with the official level of need calculation, which is based on population characteristics and socio-economic conditions. The figures showed that, while Northern Ireland receives just 0·63% above its recognised level of need of 124% in the current financial year, Scotland receives over 20% more than its most recent recognised level of need, taking it to over 125% and above the per capita figure in Northern Ireland. Likewise, Wales receives over 8·5% above its most recent recognised level of need, bringing its figure to around 124% as well. Northern Ireland needs recognition of its additional needs, such as its rurality and the level of need here.

The Democratic Unionist Party will continue to lead the charge for a sustainable Budget for Northern Ireland while pushing for greater efficiency and transformation in our public services. The amendment in the name of Jemma Dolan and Deirdre Hargey is an improvement on the original motion, removing the nonsense about a 5% cut and highlighting the better funding settlement for Scotland and Wales. The DUP will support that amendment.

Mr Gaston: Certainly, there are elements of the motion that have merit and others that are misguided. You will find no dispute from me that Northern Ireland would be better off with an agreed Budget and a Government with a plan for not just the incoming year but the years ahead. However, I will make two observations about that. First, the Budget must be fair and equitable. The Finance Minister has told us that time and time again, but the draft that he produced was certainly not that.

We find that over £101·5 million is committed to Casement, which is an increase in the original commitment to the project of over 60%. Some months ago, when I brought a proposal to the House to seek clawback of some of that cost to the public purse, some of the loudest howls in this place came from many of the SDLP Members in the Opposition. Why? Because they are happy to throw money at the GAA. There is no parallel hike in the subregional stadia projects, which, combined, get a mere £67 million, with many deserving clubs missing out entirely on the funding.

Then, of course, we have that old chestnut: the A5. How many millions are set aside in the draft Budget for that? The figure is no longer in the millions. It has ballooned to a figure of £1·1 billion set aside for the A5. Why has that project been so problematic and expensive? It is because of the very climate change legislation that the House put in place, with the SDLP being among its most vocal advocates.

The Sinn Féin amendment, which parallels the SDLP motion, defaults to its favourite place and the usual position of, "Blame the Brits", even though Northern Ireland is funded to 124% compared with England. Sinn Féin proposes that the Assembly recognises that the Fiscal Council report:

Really? What does the Fiscal Council report say on page 27? It states:

Those are not my words or Treasury's words; those are the words of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council in the very report that Sinn Féin cites in support of its amendment.

Only a few lines later, the report states:

We will move to page 19, which states:

I am all for making the case for a fair funding deal for Northern Ireland, but the premise of the Sinn Féin amendment is undermined by the very report that it cites and relies on.

In considering all things equally, we have to look at what the problem is. The problem is Stormont and the priorities. Politics is all about priorities, and, over the years, we have seen time and time again that the Executive do not take the hard decisions. If they are to be taken seriously, we need to get our own house in order before we continue to roll out the Oliver Twist mentality of asking for more money. I certainly do not believe that, if we get funded to whatever level we ask for, all our ills in this place will disappear. The problems go a lot deeper than that.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Time is up.

Mr Gaston: There are structural problems and cultural problems —

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

Mr Gaston: — and that is what we need to deal with first.

Mr Carroll: I hope that Members will join me in saying, "Slán"

to Keir Starmer and "Good riddance" to the man, because he was a disaster for working-class communities in Ireland, England and elsewhere. His Budgets have been absolutely brutal.

As has been said in the debate already, from the end of July, with no Budget agreed, the Executive will be legally able to spend just 95% of last year's allocation. That is a self-imposed 5% cut, with no vote and no mandate from the people who will pay for it. To make matters worse, that 95% is measured against the opening figure, before a single penny of in-year funding. If we layer inflation on top, we are looking at a cut that bites far deeper than the 5% mentioned, affecting services that are already stretched to breaking point. It is not the people who fail to agree the Budget who will pay; it is workers and families, who are already being squeezed from every side.

Hospital doctors have been balloted for strike action after being offered a pay rise that does not come close to undoing 15 years of real-term pay erosion. Health and education workers are being driven towards the picket lines simply to stop their wages falling further behind. Those are the same people who hold our public services together, and they are being told to do more for less year after year. The cost-of-living crisis is now a permanent fixture in politics. In Belfast alone — to take one example — the average price of a new let private rent is now over £1,100 a month. House prices here are rising at roughly six times the UK average, which is putting homeownership, and even rent, out of reach for an entire generation. Food and energy prices are still through the roof, forcing thousands of families to make impossible choices. Meanwhile, supermarkets make record profits and not a word is uttered about it. That is the reality in working-class communities across the North: people are not getting by; they are going without. On top of that, the Executive propose to spend 5% less. To be fair to the Finance Minister, he is right to say, as he has done consistently, that Westminster has short-changed this place for years. There is no disagreement from me on that. Nobody should pretend that the Labour Party has been any better than the Tories were before it. We are therefore all in agreement, or are for the most part, that we are funded below our level of need. Many of us know that Westminster does not give a damn about the lives of working-class people here.

When, however, the Finance Minister tells us in the Chamber and at the Finance Committee that the only lack of urgency about the Budget is across the water, I have to push back and strongly disagree. The Executive have had months. The choice to drift towards a de facto Budget cut is one that was made in this Building by Ministers from here. We cannot rage against austerity from London while quietly imposing it from Belfast. The community and voluntary sector was dealt a massive blow back in April with the re-profiling of the local growth fund. Shamefully, the Secretary of State ignored the voices of community workers — the experts on the ground — who warned about the disastrous consequences of that. The Executive refused to step in with the necessary funding, however. Tens of thousands of vulnerable adults and young people have now lost access to employment support. Hundreds of jobs have already started to disappear from the sector. It is simply not good enough for the Executive constantly to point the finger at Westminster while refusing to move mountains to support people and the services on which they rely.

I would have preferred to support the motion unamended, as it refused to let Executive parties off the hook and demanded that the Minister explain to every worker and family who is bracing for the squeeze why, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, the answer to underfunding is to fund our services even less. Hopefully, the Minister can explain that.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): I thank the Members who have spoken. I now call the Minister of Finance to respond to the debate. Minister, you have up to 15 minutes.

Mr O'Dowd: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. As I said at the outset when I made my point of order, it is disappointing, if not entirely surprising, that the Opposition have chosen to approach the issue in the way in which they have, rather than by engaging seriously with the substance of the Budget and the very real challenges that are involved in funding and delivering public services here. They appear to be far more interested in chasing headlines and securing sound bites. That was plain to see from the fact that, rather than give the House its place, the Opposition issued a press release yesterday in advance of the debate.

Perhaps most telling of all is that the figures on which the Opposition have based their case are, by their own admission, merely illustrative, yet that important qualification was tucked away on the final page of the briefing paper. The foundation of their argument is illustrative figures that have been selectively presented for political effect. The need for stable funding is real and widely shared across the Chamber. The motion, however, presents a narrative that is, at best, incomplete and, at worst, fundamentally misleading. Indeed, if I were to sum up Mr O'Toole's contribution to the debate, it would be in this fashion: he spent 75% of his time telling me that he agreed with me, with the Executive and with the point that the British Government have been underfunding this place and that he would support us in our bids to the British Government for more funding. He then spent the remaining 25% arguing against that point by trying to construct an argument that the Executive and the Finance Minister were in the wrong. We are either right on the issue or we are wrong.

I know that there will always be party politics at play in the Chamber. That is OK, as it is part of the debating culture. I am not arguing or pushing back against that, but when the leader of the Opposition, by his own admission, argues that the British Government are underfunding this place and that the Executive are therefore right to engage with the British Government and push them on the issue of receiving proper funding, it seems an ill-thought-out argument to make when he comes to the Chamber with a motion that calls on the Executive to finalise the Budget ahead of any conclusion of discussions with the British Government.

I have to say that this is part of the shambles that is having to deal with Westminster, but I expected, and, indeed, was scheduled, to have intense engagement with the British Government this week on the need for the Executive to be funded fairly and sustainably. Unfortunately, we have seen that a Prime Minister has stood down again in Downing Street, which, I suspect, will delay that engagement. It will certainly have an impact on it in some way. I had hoped that, if not by the end of this week, certainly by next week, we would have reached some sort of conclusion on an offer from the Government, a proper funding package would have been put in place and then I would be able to bring a further draft Budget to the Executive for discussion and future agreement. We are not in that position as a result of antics elsewhere.

It is clear that, when you have a debate where the leader of the Opposition, Timothy Gaston of the TUV and Gerry Carroll of People Before Profit are generally in agreement with one another, we are in a very strange and wonderful land. It brings me to my point that party politicking and gamesmanship are at play here. I will certainly not be bringing Timothy Gaston along to any engagement with the British Government: he has swallowed their line hook, line and sinker. He is now their spokesperson. He was a spokesperson for the Tories. Now he is a spokesperson for Labour. I know that his ambition is to be a spokesperson for the Reform Party. He certainly will not be coming along as part of any delegation that I will bring to see the new Chancellor of the Exchequer when they turn up because, from his point of view, this place is properly funded; we need to suck it up and get on with it. The only solution that he had

— this is your solution — is to stop Fenians playing football in Casement Park. That is your solution to everything. No matter what debate we have in the Chamber, you bring up Casement Park. It is truly a sectarian argument coming from you as regards that matter, so you will not be coming on the delegation.

If Mr O'Toole works out what his position is on support: whether he supports the 75% of his argument that he made today or the 25% of his argument against us, he will make a useful ally if he comes along. At this stage, Mr Carroll appears to be the only person in the Chamber who wants to support the original motion, which sets out a position that is not in favour of further funding for the Executive; is not in favour of funding for public-sector workers, does not support teachers, does not support healthcare workers and does not support doctors, but he is in support of it.

Mr Carroll: Will the Minister give way?

Mr O'Dowd: I will in a wee second. I cannot understand that position. As I said at the start of my contribution, I can understand party politics at play, but you also have to, from time to time, have a collegiate approach to these matters and accept the reality of the stark figures that are staring out at us. Scotland is funded well above its need to the tune of somewhere in the region of £3 billion. Wales is funded above its need to the tune of £1 billion. I, as Finance Minister, am calling on the British Government to fairly and sustainably fund our Executive.

Mr Carroll: I thank the Minister for giving way. He knows all too well that I have consistently said that this place is underfunded. I have also consistently raised the need for proper taxes on profits, something that I do not think that the Minister has articulated, but if there is a meeting with the new Chancellor, I will be happy to go along if he wants to bring me along with him.

Mr O'Dowd: If you support the original motion today, that is contrary to your position. It is absolutely contrary to your position.

All I am asking for across the Assembly Chamber is unity of purpose. The unity of purpose is that we send out a message with a united voice to the Government, or whomever the new Prime Minister and Chancellor will be — I suspect that there will be a change of Chancellor — to fund this place fairly and then allow the Executive to make decisions on their Budget. Then, there will be a challenge in the Chamber on what the priorities are and on what people believe should be funded over and above other things.

Mr Gaston: Will the Minister give way?

Mr O'Dowd: I will in a moment. I look forward to that debate, because challenges will remain with regard to how we deliver our public services, and I look forward to hearing the alternatives from colleagues. Yes, I will give way.

Mr Gaston: Does the Finance Minister not accept that, to strengthen the position in the argument that he makes, this Executive need to get their own house in order before going and simply asking for more money? Look at what we have prioritised in this place: we have prioritised MLA pay and the A5 scheme that has blossomed and bloomed out of control. With Casement, all I am asking for is equity: stadia funding is treated on the same premise that, if one goes up, another goes up. I was looking for clawback, but no, no, no, that is not good enough for nationalism in the House. To strengthen your case, you have to get your own house in order before you put out your hand for more money.

Mr O'Dowd: You were looking for clawback from only one sporting organisation.

On the point about getting your house in order, I am very robust with my Executive colleagues about the efficient and effective use of public resources and funding and ensuring that they are used to their optimum and that we are getting a good return on that investment and making a real change to people's lives. However, the Member referred to the Fiscal Council's comments on funding from as far back as 2018 and 2019. The reality is this: the Executive have not been funded in a fair, equitable and sustainable way over the past x number of years. When we continue to go from crisis to crisis in relation to finances, it makes it much more difficult to sustain public services or our Budget and budget planning at the level that is required.

The point that I am making, which has been made by others, to the Chancellor and the Government is that, if the Executive are to get on to a sustainable footing, a long-term funding programme has to be in place rather than what has happened in the past, where we had a restoration package. While that was welcome and allowed us to stabilise funding for a short number of years, once that stabilisation package left, the Executive immediately ran into challenges because they did not have sufficient funding to run public services. Some people refer to overspends, but I refer to underinvestment, where the Executive have been left in many instances with no choice other than to overspend in order to maintain services at the level that they are at. Even that level causes deep concern to the public now, because none of us can say that our public services are at the standard that we would like them to be.

Mr Martin: I thank the Finance Minister for giving way. In the first instance, if he is taking Mr O'Toole and Mr Carroll to meet the Chancellor, I wonder whether any tickets will be available for that meeting.

The Minister mentioned efficiency savings. Is he aware of a mechanism that is in place to drive forward those efficiencies in Departments? I ask that question honestly, and I am not sure what the answer is. He raised the important point about how it is not just about funding but about efficiencies. Does he have mechanisms in place to look at our Departments and drive forward efficiencies?

Mr O'Dowd: Whether you get an invite to that meeting depends on whether you behave yourselves.

When it comes to efficiency savings, there has been a lot of focus on the challenges or continued pressures on public services, which are well over a billion pounds. Aligned to that, Departments have also made savings in the region of half a billion pounds. Efficiencies and savings are being made across a range of Departments. I have individual discussions with Ministers when I believe that matters could be carried out further or other areas could be looked at or where challenges remain in areas. There might be pushback from Executive colleagues on some of those areas and agreement on others, but, ultimately, it is down to each Minister to run their Department, look for efficiencies across it and ensure that it is being run properly and effectively for the public.

We also have our transformation moneys and the public-sector transformation board, which is having a significant impact not only on the projects that have been funded but on the mindset and in allowing the Civil Service and the sectors to look at doing things in a different way. You will also know that I have set aside a significant amount of money in the draft Budget to continue the transformation programme. There are areas of ongoing work and further areas in which work can be carried out.

To bring the discussion to a conclusion, the motion, as amended, is the way forward, but I understand that there will always be party politics in this place. That is part of the process, and it is healthy. Debate and challenge are healthy, but let us present a unified approach at this stage. I hope that we can reach a successful conclusion with the Government in relation to further funding. That will bring our next challenge: agreeing a Budget. That will bring further debate and engagement on those matters, to which I look forward.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): I call Deirdre Hargey to make a winding-up speech on the amendment. Deirdre, you have up to five minutes.

Miss Hargey: Thanks very much. I thank everybody who spoke in this important debate. It is important to point out at the start that the issue before us is not simply the absence of an agreed Budget. At the core of the issue is the absence of an appropriate Budget to fund our public services at the level of need. Those services continue to operate in a system of chronic underfunding, which has been imposed by consecutive British Governments. Indeed, the Fiscal Council's recent sustainability report makes that point very clearly. Whilst it highlights that operating without an agreed Budget is unsustainable, it also confirms that the Executive are not funded at a level that reflects our need, and that is having a profound impact. We know that if a Budget is not agreed over the summer, the permanent secretary in the Department of Finance has the legal power to authorise up to 95% of the 2025-26 spend. That is a legal safeguard that ensures that public services can continue to receive funding for that period.

The challenges are taking place against the backdrop of continued underfunding and significant financial pressures. For too long, our public services, workers and communities have been expected to do more with less. We will continue to manage resources responsibly, as the Minister highlighted, but there is a clear need for a fair and sustainable funding model that enables us to invest in the services that people rely on every day. The answer is not the short-term fixes or cash injections that we have had in the past, which have allowed for the repeated Treasury script of record settlements and inability of the Executive to manage their finances — scripts that are often parroted in the Chamber. The crisis stems from a structurally flawed funding framework at the fiscal centre in Westminster. Short-term fixes will not resolve the fundamental issue. What we need is a shift towards long-term needs-based financial packages.

For me, of course, constitutional change would be the best overall reform that we could get. We know that fiscal policy at Westminster is being discussed in places such as Scotland and Wales as well, as they look to where their futures are better placed. It is clear that there is a huge disconnect between Whitehall and the reality that is being felt by people on the ground. A British Treasury policy that is managing decay, real-terms cuts and disastrous policy decisions such as Brexit or the funding of wars over public services comes on top of existing disparities between how public services are funded here by the Executive and how they are funded in Wales and Scotland. That disparity causes us to lose out on an additional £1 billion to £3 billion annually.

The Fiscal Council's sustainability report backed up the analysis of the Minister and his officials over recent months. The motion makes no mention of that, nor that citizens here and our public services are an afterthought in Westminster fiscal policy. Why should we receive less funding here? Why should our citizens and our public services be treated as second class? That is why Sinn Féin's amendment is so important. It recognises both the scale of the fiscal challenge that faces the Assembly and the reality of continued underinvestment by the British Government. The Opposition say that they are not willing to stand by in this chaos. Why is it that they are willing to stand by in the chaos that is being created at Westminster? Is it because it is their sister party that is creating that chaos? As was said earlier, the public here will no longer be gaslighted. It is not good enough just to accept crumbs off the table.

That brings me to the TUV. I am not surprised that the Member tried to use an Oliver Twist analogy. 'Oliver Twist' was about the elite punishing the poor, and that is what we are seeing now with Westminster fiscal policy. I am not surprised that the TUV is looking to the interests of the elite at Whitehall over the interests of people here who are struggling. The Member may be used to saying, "Yes sir, give me more", but we are not.

There is no doubt that we need an agreed Budget as soon as possible in order to have certainty and the ability to plan, and particularly to have the three-year Budget that the Minister has been trying to prepare. We also need to be honest that a multi-year Budget, while essential, can only deliver its full potential if it is supported by a fair and sustainable funding settlement. A multi-year Budget would allow for better planning of, greater investment in and the major transformation of our public services, but it cannot be built on the foundations of continued underfunding. I join the Minister in saying that we need to work collectively —.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Time is up.

Miss Hargey: I urge everyone to support the amendment.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): I call Matthew O'Toole to conclude and make his winding-up speech on the motion. You have up to 10 minutes.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to be able to make a winding-up speech on the motion. The factual answer to Ms Hargey as to why the motion did not mention the Fiscal Council's Budget sustainability report was because it was not published when we drafted the motion. As the official Opposition, we have to operate to very long business deadlines. We agreed to our Opposition day's being pushed back in order to enable more time for the Justice Bill. That is why it was not mentioned in the motion.

I have acknowledged the Fiscal Council's analysis. We are not trying to gainsay or downplay it. In fact, we acknowledge it. However, the appropriate way for the Executive to respond to it and use it to best leverage an improved financial settlement from the UK Government is not simply to chaotically say, "Don't blame us, guv; we're not going to take any responsibility", but to choose a set of priorities, agree a plan between the Executive parties, go to the UK Government with purpose and professionalism and say, "You need to fund this place appropriately". As the Opposition, we would genuinely endorse that. You should not simply bluff your way through, publish a draft Budget, say, "This is great", talk about party politicking and then, when the Budget is not agreed, say, "Actually, that thing that I published and that my colleagues now will not agree to was awful".

Miss Hargey: Will the Member give way?

Mr O'Toole: I will give way in a second.

As the official Opposition, we will be absolutely robust in holding the Executive to account, because that is the official Opposition's job. I say it again and again, and we make no apology for it. It would be a preposterous situation if, before we broke up for summer recess, the official Opposition were not even willing to mention to the Executive the fact that they had not agreed a Budget, while acknowledging that the UK Government, chaotic as they have been, have had a part to play in that.

Miss Hargey: Thanks very much for giving way. You mentioned that the Executive need to have a plan in engaging with Westminster, but we had one when we agreed the fiscal framework and looked at the level of need. The fundamental flaw here is that, historically, we have been underfunded from the baseline. Unless we address that, we will come round to these issues year-on-year.

Mr O'Toole: We are now debating much of what is in the Fiscal Council paper, which may be a good thing. That is why we have a Fiscal Council, which we have just passed into law. Its paper states:

We agree. However, it goes on to say:

— we can have our views on the cynicism or otherwise of the Treasury —

We agree, because it is proven. I do not disagree with the argument that Scotland and Wales are currently funded further above their level of need than Northern Ireland. The question is how we go about making that case. Is the best way to make it simply to introduce a draft Budget, refuse to pass it and then say, "Not our problem"? Genuinely, I do not think that it is. It is not credible or reasonable.

I will respond to a few of the comments that Members made, starting with the Deputy Chair of the Finance Committee, who accused us of gaslighting. She talked about the SDLP having an alternative draft Budget. Well, we are doing our job today in holding the Executive to account. The fact that the media are reporting on the £1 billion self-imposed cut — I will come back to that £1 billion, because it is a different £1 billion from the £1 billion pressure that has been talked about — and that we are exposing and highlighting it is because we are doing our job. The fact that you all feel uncomfortable about it is, I am afraid, real politics. We make absolutely no apology for that.

The Deputy Chair mentioned the £1 billion of pressure. Pressures that exist as a result of the draft Budget that the Minister published in January are not met. Obviously, there is a reserve claim. There is a loan to repay the reserve claim, and there are pressures that Departments, including those led by Diane Forsythe's colleagues, are reporting. Those are in addition to the cut that will happen if a Budget is not agreed. That means that there will be those pressures, and there will then be, legally, another £1 billion cut because a Budget has not been agreed. Not setting a Budget is not a way to put pressure on London; it puts pressure on our public services and our people. We need to take responsibility and be honest about that.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Member for giving way. Does he accept that, if a Budget were to be set and signed up to by Ministers today, that would mean signing up to £1 billion of cuts up front as well as the £1 billion that he mentioned in his motion? Does he have an alternative proposal for a Budget that could be agreed today?

Mr O'Toole: We have lots of alternative proposals, which we have published over the past year and a half. We are not, as you will have seen, in government. We did not get enough seats to be in the Executive, so our job is to hold the rest of you to account. We make absolutely no apology for that. It is Sinn Féin and the DUP, alongside the Alliance Party and others in the Executive, who have the power. They have the ministerial cars, the ministerial salaries and the thousands of civil servants. You guys do your jobs; we will do ours.

I will go on and talk about some of the other points that were made. Stewart Dickson was correct to reflect on the need to take responsibility and make choices. We are supposed to be a devolved Assembly; power is devolved here.

I agree with Sinn Féin: we want to see ultimate power devolved back to this island and constitutional change. The step on that journey that I want to take is our taking responsibility in the here and now, rather than simply allowing a UK Government, whether Labour, Tory, Reform or any other complexion, to have all the power and responsibility. I want us to take responsibility here. It is worth saying that we have made zero progress on fiscal devolution under successive Sinn Féin Finance Ministers since the publication of the Fiscal Commission report.

Mr Gaston gave his perennial interpretation. I do not agree at all with the begging bowl depiction of politics, but I agree that the Executive are dysfunctional, that they refuse responsibility and that they are willing to throw all responsibility to London. I also think that successive UK Governments have been cynical; the two things can be true at the same time. The Minister said earlier that I was contradictory because, on the one hand, I criticised the Executive while, on the other, I criticised the UK Government. Shock horror: the two things can be true at the same time. The Executive can be dysfunctional and chaotic, and the UK Government can be both of those things, too. I think that the average person watching on their television screen and reading their newspaper sees exactly that and sees how those two dysfunctionalities reinforce each other. It makes the case for leadership and responsibility to be taken here. If, like me, you want to build a new Ireland, as the Finance Minister and his colleagues say that they do, you should take more responsibility here first of all, and then build a new Ireland. We have to take responsibility and show leadership, rather than simply bluffing our way through, publishing a draft Budget and saying, "Ah, this is grand, sure. We'll maybe get agreement on this". We are supposed to be engaged in the biggest act of transformation and constitutional change in western Europe — that is what we want — since the end of the Cold War. We cannot simply mosey into it, shrug our shoulders and refuse to accept responsibility here locally where we have it. That undermines our broader case.

Minister, you said earlier that we are either right or wrong. It is more complicated than that. I acknowledge that you and the Fiscal Council are right: there is a discrepancy in funding between Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland. However, you are wrong to say that that simply absolves the Executive of responsibility for public services here. There is a range of choices that have not been made by Ministers. You published a draft Budget and insisted to me that it was going to be passed. You encouraged your colleagues to pass it. I do not know what has changed, but I am happy to give way.

Mr O'Dowd: I thank the Member for giving way. You are one or two steps ahead of the argument. We are still engaged with the British Government on proper and fair funding for this place. That engagement needs to conclude. In my opinion, the Executive will have to pass a Budget at some stage in the future.

Mr O'Toole: I appreciate your giving me that clarity. We have done our job today as the official Opposition by proposing the motion because we now have more clarity from the Finance Minister on the position. We are told not to table such motions and that we are letting the side down by holding the Executive to account. Hang on: there are community and voluntary sector organisations here that do not know what their funding is going to be to deliver public services next year. The deputy First Minister said a few weeks ago that the absence of a Budget was holding up support for domestic violence victims. The Communities Minister said that the absence of a Budget was holding up the issuing of housing support. You can multiply that by God knows how many things across our society. Universities are having their capital budgets and other things squeezed. That is not just because of the funding settlement from London; it is because they are operating within contingency envelopes, as was set out in a letter from your permanent secretary, Minister. It not good enough for the Executive to simply shrug off all responsibility, pretend that there is nothing to see here and cc London. No. The UK Government need to fund this place properly. We, as the Opposition, will be serious and constructive about that, but we will not allow the Executive to wash their hands of taking responsibility and impose further cuts on top of those that have already happened, simply because of their own inaction and chaos. We will hold them to account. The public here deserve better.

I commend the motion to the Assembly.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): There was only one dissenting voice. That can be noted, Mr Gaston.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Again, there was one dissenting voice. That can be noted, Mr Gaston.

I ask Members to take their ease before we move to the next item in the Order Paper.

Mr McGrath: I beg to move

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): 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 in which to propose and 10 minutes in which to make a winding-up speech. All other Members who are called to speak will have five minutes.

Mr McGrath: The motion goes to the very heart of whether people trust this place or not, because, when they look at public appointments in Northern Ireland, too many people no longer believe that the best person gets the job. Too often, what they believe they are seeing is political networks rewarding political insiders. Northern Ireland has seen that culture before. For years, politics here developed a reputation for nepotism, with political offices being staffed by relatives or family members, and that grated with the public. Much of that practice was challenged, because people understood something fundamentally important, which is that the use of public money and appointments to public positions should never become extensions of party machinery or political dynasties.

Although some of that old culture has diminished, a new perception has emerged in its place. Increasingly, the concern is not about who gets employed in constituency offices but about who gets appointed to boards, who gets a position of influence and who get a seat around the table where public money and public services are discussed and where public policy is shaped. Again, people are noticing a familiar pattern. When a DUP Minister of Education appoints a sitting DUP councillor as chair of the Education Authority, people take notice. When Sinn Féin Ministers appoint Sinn Féin representatives to public bodies, people take notice. Even today, a DUP Minister has appointed a DUP councillor to a public board. Sure, keep it all in the political family. When politically connected figures repeatedly emerge to take up appointments that are overseen by their own parties, with little independent oversight and limited scrutiny, people draw their own conclusions.

Ministers cannot simply dismiss those concerns by saying that a process was technically followed, because the issue is bigger than process. The issue is one of confidence. Do people genuinely believe that such appointments are based on merit? Do they genuinely believe that the best person is getting the job or that political access, party proximity and party loyalty matter most? That is the question, and it is a dangerous question for democracy, because trust in institutions is already fragile. Public appointments should not operate as political rewards. They should not be consolation prizes. They should not be a vehicle for parties to extend their influence through arm's-length bodies (ALBs). They should be about one thing and one thing only: getting the best person into a position in which they can deliver for the public. It should be the person with the strongest skills, the greatest expertise and the clearest ability to improve outcomes, not the person with the right party membership card.

These appointments matter enormously. These bodies oversee huge sums of public money. They influence education, investment, infrastructure and public services across the North. What makes the issue so important is that it speaks directly to a wider problem that is facing politics today: trust. People were promised government that would be open, accountable and focused on delivering for the public. They were promised better. Instead, too many people are seeing a system in which the same parties hold power, make the appointments and then insist that there is nothing wrong. What we have is not working. Confidence in public appointments has been weakened. That matters, because public appointments are not just some side issue. As I have said, these bodies oversee our schools, investment agencies, public services and significant amounts of public money. The public deserve confidence that positions are being filled by the best candidate available.

We saw the issue arise recently with the controversy surrounding summer schemes for children with special educational needs. Families were, rightly, furious. Children who rely on those schemes were facing the prospect of losing vital support. When questions were raised, it became clear that the board responsible is heavily populated with representatives from all four Executive parties, yet, when concerns were raised, we were told that they were somehow not political appointments but political representatives. The public are not fools; they understand how politics works, and they understand influence. They also understand why scrutiny matters. If parties are happy to celebrate appointments when things are going well, they cannot suddenly distance themselves when difficult decisions are taken. Accountability cannot be optional. If appointments are not genuinely merit-based, public confidence collapses. That is why the absence of a Commissioner for Public Appointments for more than four years was so serious. The independent watchdog responsible for protecting confidence in the system simply was not there. At precisely the moment when confidence needed to be strengthened, oversight disappeared. Leaving the office vacant for so long sent entirely the wrong message. At a time when transparency needed to be reinforced, scrutiny was weakened.

The SDLP believes that public service should be open to everyone. Talented people from every background should feel that these opportunities are genuinely accessible to them. Appointments should be determined by ability, competency and integrity, not political patronage dressed up as procedure. The Executive often talk of restoring confidence in politics. Confidence is not restored through speeches. It is restored through actions, when people can see that public appointments are based on merit, expertise and integrity; when positions that are funded by taxpayers are genuinely open to everyone and genuinely awarded to the strongest candidate; and when independent scrutiny is welcomed rather than avoided. That perception matters. If people believe that public bodies are being stacked with political allies, trust in our institutions suffers.

What we have is not working, but it does not have to be this way. We can do better. We can build a public appointments system that commands confidence because it is transparent, independent and beyond reproach — a system in which the public can once again believe that the best person, not the best-connected person, gets the job. That is how we rebuild trust, strengthen confidence in devolution and begin to build something new.

Mrs Erskine: There are many burning issues outside the Chamber, yet here we have the Opposition using vital time to score points on a matter that is never mentioned to me on the doors. I never hear this on the doors, and I go out to speak to people regularly.

Many individuals across all political parties who are appointed to public bodies have served in elected office. The argument that is being advanced by the SDLP appears to suggest that former Ministers, councillors or MLAs should somehow be excluded from public appointments. Such an approach would deprive public bodies of valuable experience, knowledge and expertise.

The SDLP cannot simultaneously demand strong and experienced leadership in public bodies while objecting when experienced public servants apply successfully for positions through the public appointments process.

The motion appears to be less concerned about improving governance and more about focusing on political point-scoring. It highlights the absence of a Commissioner for Public Appointments. The absence of such a commissioner, however, does not mean the absence of scrutiny. Departments are bound by a public appointments code, legal obligations and established audit requirements. Robust safeguards exist, and public appointments remain subject to oversight and accountability. That is not to say that we do not share concerns about certain appointments.

I was surprised that the SDLP, when opening the debate, did not once reference a recent Invest NI appointment. Invest NI plays a critical role in attracting business, securing investment and supporting economic growth across Northern Ireland. The decisions that it takes today will help to shape the economy for generations. It is essential, therefore, that appointments to its board command public confidence. That is why the histories of those being appointed are looked at. Alongside others with close connections to Sinn Féin, the Economy Minister appointed Peter Lynch to the board of Invest NI. Mr Lynch was convicted in 1993 of conspiracy to murder an RUC officer. Such an appointment does not send the right message to potential investors considering Northern Ireland as a destination for investment and growth, yet the SDLP chose in its opening remarks to attack DUP appointments more so than an appointment that was made by Sinn Féin: someone who was convicted of conspiracy to murder an RUC officer. It is an appointment such as that that risks undermining public confidence in the appointments process.

Let me be clear: where DUP Ministers made appointments, they were conducted through an honest, open and transparent process. Individuals were appointed on merit, ability and suitability. Claims to the contrary are unfounded. People are concerned about hospital waiting lists, the condition of roads and the pressure on public services, and they expect the Assembly to address those challenges. Instead, we are debating a motion that appears to be designed by the SDLP to generate political headlines. I can assure the SDLP that it will not even make the news tonight or be discussed around dinner tables.

People want delivery on real, practical solutions to the issues that I outlined, including hospital waiting lists and the condition of roads. Instead, we are debating a motion on a subject that people never raise with me.

Mr Dickson: Methinks that the Member protests too much. [Interruption.]

I rise on behalf of the Alliance Party, and as Deputy Chair of the Committee for the Executive Office. I have followed this issue closely, and raised it on a number of occasions at the Committee and in the House. The concerns in the motion are real and well founded.

Let me start with the vacancy. The post of Commissioner for Public Appointments sat vacant for more than four years between May 2021 and August 2025. During that time, Ministers continued to make appointments to boards and other public bodies. They did so without an independent regulator in post to oversee the process. Therefore, although I welcomed Claire Keatinge's appointment when it came, because it was the right appointment, I was clear that it was long overdue, and I make no apology for saying that again today. The recruitment competition was not even launched until March 2025. What happened during the four-year period before that? The public deserve answers to that question.

The second issue is that it is not enough to simply have a commissioner in post; the system needs to allow them to deliver. Claire Keatinge has already said that the data on who sits on the boards of our public bodies is "poor" — not inadequate or incomplete but "poor" — and we need an explanation of that description. That is the commissioner herself, the person whose entire role is to oversee the process, telling us that she cannot say with total confidence who sits at the table in those bodies and boardrooms. Fewer than half of the applicants complete monitoring forms. We like to talk a great deal in the Chamber about equality, diversity and inclusion, but if we measure only half, we are basically flying blind, or, worse, doing so deliberately. That is a real and fundamental weakness in the system, and it requires immediate attention.

There is a pattern that many Members will recognise, which is the same profiles appearing on boards. That is not a criticism of the individuals involved, many of whom bring considerable experience and a genuine commitment to public service, but it raises the questions of why we keep seeing the same people, who is not getting through and what information is needed to widen the pool. People in business, community organisations and the voluntary sector describe the process as not feeling accessible to them. Many do not know how to apply; others do not even realise that the opportunities exist. If the process itself is a barrier to participation, it is really not open to all. I urge the Executive Office and the commissioner to make public a profile of all the vacancies and to encourage the widest range of people to apply and be considered for the posts.

I make it clear, however, that this is not a blanket criticism of all appointments that were made while the commissioner's post was empty. The concern is that the independent check was not there. We simply have no way of knowing whether appointments were made well or badly during that period, because there was nobody independent to tell people. Ministers who ran open competitions on merit did the right thing, but the public could not verify that, and that is the central problem. We know better than most what happens when public confidence in institutions breaks down. The last thing that any of us wants is to give people another reason to disengage from politics here. Every time there is a reasonable question about whether an appointment was made on merit or connection, public trust takes a hit. We cannot ask people to have faith in the institutions and then hand them reasons not to. The Alliance Party will support the motion. We will keep a keen eye out to make sure that the post does not become another box-ticking exercise.

Mr Butler: As an Ulster Unionist spokesperson, I support the motion, not because we believe that every public appointment made in Northern Ireland is flawed or that those who serve on our public bodies do not bring valuable skills and experience — many do — but because public confidence is what matters. In reality, trust in institutions is hard won and easily lost. Once people begin to believe that who you know matters more than what you know, confidence in government starts to erode. That is why the vacancy in the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments should concern every Member of this House.

For over four years, from 2021 to 2025, Northern Ireland had no independent watchdog overseeing public appointments. During that period, hundreds of appointments were made to public organisation, ALBs and publicly funded boards. Whether the appointments were entirely appropriate is a reasonable question; however, the more important question is why no independent scrutiny was in place to provide the reassurance that the public deserve. Good governance is not about simply doing the right thing; it is about being able to demonstrate that the right thing has been done.

We have all seen appointments generate headlines and public debate. Concerns have been raised about appointments to Invest NI, for instance, and about other public boards and commissioner roles, and questions have been asked about political connections and affiliations.

Mr Delargy: I thank the Member for giving way. Can he specify what concerns he has about the appointments to Invest NI, given that the process was open and transparent and based on merit? Is it simply that he does not accept that any republican can hold a position in public office?

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

Mr Butler: I thank the Member. He maybe sees everything through a green and orange lens. That is certainly not something that I do. Those concerns have been well covered in the public debate. [Inaudible.]

Mr Butler: The Member will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate —. [Inaudible.]

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Mr Delargy, we will not have that behaviour in the Chamber. We will not. You will have an ability to speak afterwards. Do not barrack from a sedentary position. It is not happening when I am in the Chair.

Mr Butler: Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker.

In many cases, there may be perfectly legitimate explanations. The difficulty is that, when oversight is absent, suspicions fill the vacuum. That is unfair not only on the public but on those who are appointed. People who put themselves forward for public service deserve to have confidence that their appointment is recognised as being based on merit, expertise and ability. They should not find themselves subject to speculation simply because the system lacks the transparency necessary to command public confidence.

The newly appointed commissioner, Claire Keatinge, has spoken openly about the challenges that she has inherited: a significant reduction in independent assessors, limited audit capacity and legislation that has not kept pace with modern governance standards. She described public bodies operating outside the scope of regulation as a significant regulatory gap. We should listen carefully to that warning. Public appointments matter because public bodies matter. These organisations oversee millions of pounds of public expenditure and influence economic development, healthcare, education, infrastructure, environmental protection and public services. The people appointed to lead them should be the very best candidates available, selected through processes that are transparent, robust and beyond reproach.

At a time when trust in politics is under pressure across these islands and beyond, we should not be lowering standards; we should be strengthening them. The debate is not about party politics — certainly not — despite what Members from across the Chamber have said, and it is not about settling old scores. It is about recognising that confidence in public appointments underpins confidence in public institutions. People in Northern Ireland deserve to know that appointments are made because individuals are qualified to do the job, not because they happen to know the right people, belong to the right party or move in the right circles. Merit must always come first; transparency must be expected; and independent oversight must never again be allowed to disappear for four years. If we are serious about rebuilding trust in politics and restoring confidence in public appointments, that is a very good place to start.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Dr Aiken): Thank you very much indeed, Mr Butler.

As Question Time begins at 2.00 pm, I suggest that the Assembly take its ease until then. The debate will continue after the question for urgent oral answer, when the next Member to speak will be Mr Delargy, so you will get your chance then. [Laughter.]