Official Report: Tuesday 06 October 2026

Mrs Mason: Today, the £63 household electricity discount comes into effect. I commend the Sinn Féin Minister for the Economy, Caoimhe Archibald, for bringing in the scheme and for putting money back in people's pockets. Electricity suppliers will implement the discount automatically, with the £63 being credited to bills or added when prepaid meter or pay-as-you-go customers top up their prepaid meter card.

The discount comes at a time when people are continuing to struggle with the cost-of-living crisis, as high fuel and grocery costs prevail, thus making it much harder for them to make ends meet. As we move into the winter, people will be using more electricity in the home, so it is a timely intervention. The £63 electricity discount does not, however, deal with all the pressures being felt by households. We will therefore continue to work to support people here. That includes continuing to insist on having a Budget that protects people, that properly invests in public services and that ensures that people get the services and support that they need.

Mr Buckley: Yesterday, in the House, we talked about the vile sectarian abuse that was being pushed on to the people of my constituency by Sinn Féin. Whilst there was, rightly, much focus on that topic, one thing that was really apparent was the lack of response from the First Minister and her party colleagues to what can only be described as the most vile and misogynistic abuse towards my constituency colleague Carla Lockhart MP.

Over the past week, that lady, a democratically elected politician, has been bullied, abused and vilified by a Sinn Féin-whipped-up mob. Outside the court, we saw democratically elected Sinn Féin politicians with loudhailers, calling on the mob. The mob spat at her, abused her physical appearance and took issue with her cause, but that was not enough for it. That continued during the week, and its online rent-a-mob did the same. Michelle O'Neill, the First Minister for all, is a lady who has talked in the House many times about a strategy to end violence against women and girls. That was all just hot air from a First Minister who, when asked in the House on not one but two occasions — potentially even three occasions — to condemn those abusive personal attacks, did not do so. Mrs Mason is in the House this morning and has made her Member's statement. She also did not do that today.

I say this, folks: you can have political disagreements with any Member from this party, but to subject anybody to such vile hatred and abuse is wrong. It is not just Carla Lockhart; my colleague Diane Dodds has received the same abuse. As democratically elected representatives for Upper Bann, we have been vilified for standing up for our community. It is not going to happen. Carla Lockhart is a mother, a daughter, a sister and a representative, and she deserves respect, not vile, ramped-up hatred from Sinn Féin or any other person who has been elected to the House.

Mr Honeyford: I will talk about ordinary people who live ordinary lives, because the Chamber underestimates just how far people have moved forward in the past while. The fleadh was a brilliant example that showcased that. People from every background came together, enjoyed themselves and shared this place. That is Northern Ireland today. People are getting on with their lives, working, raising their families, building businesses and enjoying sport, music and our culture. They are looking forward. They struggle to understand why anybody wants to drag us back to the arguments of the past. Why should a tiny minority that is determined to keep division alive get to dictate the future of everybody else who is living an ordinary life? The vast majority of people here have moved on. This is their home. Whether they are British, Irish, both or neither, most people are proud to be from here and to call this place home.

What they ask us to do is pretty simple: deal with the things that actually affect their lives. Right now, one of the biggest issues for them is the cost of living. Diesel prices have hit over £2 a litre and are expected to rise. For people who go to work and our farmers, hauliers and small businesses, that increases their costs. Those costs do not disappear, as people will pay them in their weekly shop. Mortgage rates look like they will rise, which will push rents up. We see the soaring prices of heating oil, gas and electricity. People are worried about the cost of getting to work, heating their homes and putting food on the table. They expect the House to focus on those things. They expect us to bring down those energy costs, to work together to help them and to shout from the rooftops to the UK Government so that they help our people and so that the people who live here have more money in their pockets.

The people who are outside this Building are miles ahead of the politics that we hear in it. They have moved forward, and this place has not kept up. They want us to focus on their lives, their families and their future, not on the internal party noise, the culture war distraction and the fingers being pointed at one another. They want delivery. They demand delivery. We need to share our home to build our future. That is exactly where the House needs to focus and where we need to be.

Mr Burrows: I am absolutely delighted to spend a few moments talking about the achievements of one of my constituents, Reuben Kernohan from Ahoghill, who is one of the finest motor sport competitors in Northern Ireland, the island of Ireland and, indeed, the United Kingdom. He is an absolutely dedicated and talented young man, and, in the past two years, his achievements have been outstanding. In 2025, Reuben was crowned Rotax all-Ireland champion. He was then given the opportunity to represent Ireland at the world finals in Bahrain. In 2025, he really cleaned up. He was named driver of the year by the Ulster Karting Club, and he won the all-Ireland championship, the Ulster championship, the Ulster points championship and the Tommy Rogers memorial trophy. He also finished that year as runner-up in the Irish Grand Prix. What an outstanding season. He came back for more in 2026, retaining the Rotax all-Ireland championship title. He also secured victory this year in the Irish Grand Prix and cemented his position as one of the outstanding talents in motor sport in Northern Ireland.

In life, success does not happen automatically; it happens through years of hard work, support from parents, practice, determination and getting over the setbacks. Reuben's journey began with racing teams in England, where he achieved numerous victories and podium finishes. In 2021, he became the junior T4 Tillotson world champion. He has shown versatility in different types of kart racing, but what stands out about Reuben is not just his talent and skill but his character. He is respected throughout the motor sport community for his professionalism, sportsmanship and determination. He gives 100% and is a role model not just to young people but to everyone in Northern Ireland.

In November, Reuben will head off to Portugal to compete in the Rotax world grand finals, where he will once again represent the people of our country. Everyone in Ahoghill, in North Antrim and across Northern Ireland will be cheering him on. I pay tribute to his family, who are here today. Their support has been instrumental to his success. Reuben has accomplished more in his 18 young years than many do in a lifetime. We often talk about the negatives in Northern Ireland. We often talk about things that really do not matter, but our young people are what make us proud, and no one makes me more proud in my constituency than Reuben Kernohan, who has achieved a lot through his determination and tenacity and is supported by a wonderful family. Congratulations, Reuben.

Mr McNulty: I rise to announce a public rally in Hill Street, Newry, at 2.30 pm on Sunday 25 October to save maternity services at Daisy Hill Hospital. I speak for midwives, maternity teams, health workers and, most importantly, the mothers and families of Newry, south Armagh and south Down. I speak because something fundamental is at stake. I speak because the maternity service at Daisy Hill Hospital is under threat. I say clearly that the women and families of our border region deserve safe, accessible maternity care close to home.

The Southern Health and Social Care Trust has confirmed that it faces serious workforce pressures in the maternity service at Daisy Hill Hospital following consultant obstetrician retirements and resignations. The trust has said that, unless sufficient staff can be secured, it may have to temporarily consolidate births and inpatient maternity care at Craigavon Area Hospital within the next six to eight weeks. Let us be absolutely clear about what that means. It is not simply about a hospital building. It is not about where mothers give birth. It is about where families go when pregnancy becomes complicated. It is about emergency care. It is about antenatal and postnatal services. It is about midwives, doctors and other maternity staff who have built a remarkable service that families across the region rely on. It is about whether people living in our part of the North can continue to have access to essential healthcare close to their community.

The trust has said that the overriding priority is the safety of women and babies. We agree. Safety must come first, but safety cannot simply be used as a reason to move a service. If the proposed alternative is to transfer all births and inpatient maternity care to Craigavon Area Hospital, including up to 1,900 births a year, how can patient safety be claimed as the justifying rationale? Where is the detailed capacity assessment? What additional staffing would Craigavon require? What about all the jobs that are relied on in Daisy Hill Hospital? Where will they go? Will people be forced to stay quiet, as is the case now? Will the unions not be backing people to come out and talk honestly and openly about what is happening and about their fears for the future, including for mothers who might be forced to have their babies on the side of the road between Newry and Craigavon? Mothers are scared. Staff are scared.

We have seen our First Ministers in Drumcree, which is a very important issue, but our First Ministers are not being upfront about maternity services in Daisy Hill Hospital. Why are they not shouting about it? Why are the Executive not taking the lead to protect maternity services at our hospital in Newry? Why is that not happening? Why are they not visible? Why are they not vocal in protecting our maternity services at Daisy Hill Hospital? It is not good enough.

Mr Kearney: Eight of the world's largest companies have made $93 billion profit in just three months of Israel and America's ongoing war against Iran. We all know that escalating food, oil and energy costs are exacerbating the ongoing cost-of-living crisis for ordinary workers and families. This is a time when families are being forced to choose between heating and eating, so it is an absolute travesty that, during this cost-of-living crisis, the working-class community of the Garvaghy Road should be subjected to the irrationality of a triumphalist sectarian parade and reactionary politics being forced upon their area.

Earlier this year, the world's top oil and gas companies made $30 million profit every minute during the early stages of that war. Some have quadrupled their profits in a period in which we are experiencing unprecedented levels of global inequality and hunger. The case is now compelling: the British Government should redistribute existing windfall taxes to support working people. They should cut tax and VAT on oil, petrol and diesel to reduce costs for consumers. It is time that the big corporations were brought to heel and compelled to pay their fair share of taxes, and it is time that ordinary workers and families were given a break.

Mr Martin: Very sadly, Ray Close, the Belfast-born boxer who made Bangor his home, died last week at the age of just 57. He will be warmly remembered as not only one of Northern Ireland's finest boxers but a complete gentleman.

Ray turned professional in 1988 and went on to win the Irish super-middleweight title before claiming the European crown in 1993. However, he is best and most fondly remembered for two very memorable battles with Chris Eubank for the World Boxing Organization title. Many of us in Northern Ireland would say that he was robbed by the judges in at least one of those fights.

Ray's contribution to boxing went well beyond his own career. He started boxing in Ledley Hall in east Belfast, and, in later years, he gave his time and experience to young boxers in Bangor Abbey Boxing Academy. Ray was always very willing to encourage others and pass on the knowledge that he had accumulated over many years of boxing. He certainly did that with his son William.

I will remember Ray through a much more personal connection: when I was mayor in 2013, I had the great pleasure, perhaps showing very questionable wisdom, of taking part in a five-round exhibition match with Ray's son William Close. William was, quite frankly, a giant of a man in both frame and power. I lost substantially, although I think that the judges very graciously called it a draw on the day.

The fight was organised by another local boxing legend Sandy Rice, who brought us together for that very memorable occasion. A photo of the fight between William and me is on the wall of my constituency office in Bangor.

Ray's passing represents a significant loss to his family, his friends and the boxing community in Bangor, across North Down and throughout Northern Ireland. He leaves a proud legacy in the ring, perhaps most importantly for the many young boxers and other young people whom he encouraged throughout his career. Ray Close was a champion, a mentor, a gentleman and a family man. He will be much missed by many in North Down and by his family in particular.

Mrs Guy: The cervical screening scandal in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust is a story of failure. Three years ago, news of the scandal broke when 17,500 women received a letter to tell them that their cervical screening results were being reviewed. It is hard to convey the impact of receiving that letter. Before opening it, those women knew only that they had done the right thing: they had gone for their smear, received the all-clear and carried on with their lives. Then they opened that letter and experienced shock, fear, concern and uncertainty.

That letter was not the culprit but the messenger. The failures were systemic and extended across 13 years. Two women died after their cervical smears were read incorrectly. Lynsey Courtney and Erin Harbinson were young women and mothers. Their lives were cut tragically short. I say this to their families: I am desperately sorry for your loss; no words can ever fully convey the pain of losing someone you love in those circumstances. There must, however, be accountability. Six reports have been produced, and there have been reviews, recommendations and commitments, but, three years on, women and families are still waiting for accountability, transparency and the answers that they deserve.

Let us not forget the women who survived: women went through cancer treatment — surgery, chemotherapy and other invasive and deeply personal procedures. Those experiences may have been avoided had the system worked as it should.

I make a direct appeal to Minister Butler to act: act not simply as a Minister and a departmental representative but as a father and husband. Minister, put yourself in the shoes of those women and their families. Those women deserve more than sympathy, meetings and photo ops; they deserve answers and accountability. That is why I am joining Ladies with Letters and MLAs from across the Chamber to call on you, Minister, to deliver a statutory public inquiry for Lynsey, Erin and the 17,500 women affected by the scandal. We owe them nothing less.

Mr Delargy: Double taxation continues to be a huge issue for people across many border communities such as mine. It is a block to many people in accessing employment. Partition continues to create barriers, and Brexit has made them worse. The recent Irish Business and Employers Confederation and CBI report on all-Ireland labour mobility highlights huge potential, but it also highlights the barriers that remain around taxation, social protection and employment.

A recent Economic and Social Research Institute report states that up to 19,000 people regularly move from the North to the South and from the South to the North for employment. As a result, we see that trade, investment and supply chains are increasingly operating across Ireland, but our systems have yet to catch up. We therefore have a system in which people who move between Derry and Donegal or Newry and Louth, and in many of our other border communities, face double taxation and a system that treats them unfairly, first in accessing the workplace, and, secondly, in how they interact with the workplace, particularly with regard to taxation and administration. We see that particularly in the case of remote and hybrid working. Employers can be reluctant to recruit people in the North because of the cross-border arrangements, which are much too complicated.

I recognise the work of my colleagues John O'Dowd, Caoimhe Archibald and Conor Murphy on that issue, alongside, in particular, Border People, the Centre for Cross Border Studies and the chambers of commerce, which have pushed the practical solutions.

We also need to see the removal of barriers to student mobility, ensuring lower student fees, increased post-graduate loans and improved maintenance support, so that our economy is as integrated as it can be and we see the best employment solutions and the best opportunities for all of our young people and workers across Ireland.

Mrs Erskine: Yesterday, when the First Minister finally came to the Chamber, she was asked a number of times to condemn the language and vile abuse that has been directed at Carla Lockhart and Diane Dodds, but she refused to do so. The First Minister has a lot of grand titles. She previously told us that she was "First Minister for all", and yesterday she told us that she was:

What is right? Is it right that someone who is mother, a daughter and a wife should be subjected to horrific abuse and threats simply because she is a woman in public life? Is it right that a woman should face threats of physical violence, intimidation and misogynistic abuse, and that the First Minister for Northern Ireland cannot bring herself to simply say, "Stop"? The Executive whom the First Minister claims to lead, have made ending violence against women and girls a priority. That cannot simply be a slogan or a strategy document.

Leadership matters most when it requires you to speak out, including on occasions when the women who are being targeted happen to be your political opponents. Other Sinn Féin representatives have managed to do exactly that. I welcome the fact that John O'Dowd went on the radio this morning and condemned the activity, and that Catherine Seeley condemned it publicly this morning. Clearly, they have recognised that the abuse crosses a line, yet the First Minister — the woman who holds the highest office in this place and tells us that she represents everybody — cannot do the same. Right now, the First Minister stands alone, and there is a wedge between her and her party colleagues. Her silence, by not calling out the abuse of DUP representatives and asking for it to end, is stark.

This should not be about party politics. It is about basic decency. No woman should be threatened with violence because of her political views, and no woman should have to accept vile abuse as a price of her public service. Therefore I ask the question again: First Minister, will you condemn the threats and abuse that have been directed at Carla Lockhart and Diane Dodds? Will you, clearly and unequivocally, tell those responsible to stop? If we cannot unite around something so basic as that, what does the term, "First Minister for all" actually mean?

Dr Aiken: On 7 October, three years ago, the worst atrocity since the Holocaust was committed on the Jewish people. On Simchat Torah, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, thousands of Hamas terrorists, Palestinian jihadists and so-called Palestinians crossed into southern Israel. They murdered, raped and tortured 1,300 men, women and children — in many cases, the did so in the most barbaric fashion. Particular attention was given to women, many of whom were brutalised whilst being raped; children of all ages, who were burnt alive; the old; the disabled; and the likes of Liel Hetzroni, a young girl who just wanted to go to school the next day. There was one common factor: they were slaughtered by the sectarian mobs because they were Jews.

There is no doubt that a terrorist and sectarian mob conducted those atrocities. We know, because they livestreamed their attacks on social media. The beheadings and mutilations were not from someone's sick imagination or scenes from a horror movie: they were crimes against humanity and were proudly recorded by those intent on pure antisemitic evil. To pretend otherwise is to deny reality.

While the terror of 7 October was still occurring, the perpetrators' antisemitic fellow travellers were already praising the terror, with "From the river to the sea" and "Long live the intifada" streaming across social media.

This while Tamar, Yonatan, their five-year-old twin daughters Shahar and Arbel and their son, Omer, aged two, were being burnt to death by Hamas.

Nowhere has the stream of vile antisemitism been more prevalent than on this island. Those who parrot the phrase "No alternative to terrorism" have issued streams of outright antisemitic propaganda. The continued parroting of those untruths, packed with vitriol, as so-called facts has resulted in this island's being rightly called out as one of the most antisemitic places in Europe. Judging by the intolerance shown on the field of sport, in our legislative Chambers and in biased reporting, even including conspiracy theories when commenting about a hijacking that was thwarted by brave Israeli passengers and an Indian pilot, it very clearly is. As we reflect on happened on 7 October 2023, we need to be asking much deeper questions about the psyche that exists on this island, because it never starts with antisemitism or ends with it. I stand, as I always do, with our embattled Jewish community and all the innocent victims of terror. Am Yisrael chai.

Mr McGrath: I will talk today about the pressures facing the fishing industry, an issue that is so relevant to my constituency, given the prominence of Kilkeel and Ardglass harbours. Mr Speaker, as a former Agriculture Minister, you will know that fishing is one of the most difficult and labour-intensive roles to perform. It is a dangerous job, and it is very often a dirty job. Our fleets work long hours and are at the mercy of the tides and the weather. Those of us who enjoy a fish supper on a Friday night do not see all that goes into how it gets on our plate, but those in the industry are not seeking acclaim, nor are they looking for special treatment. They are simply looking to have a fair chance.

Fishing is an industry, and a competitive one at that. For it to be viable and for our fishermen to continue providing the service that they do, it needs to be able to make money. Its ability to do so is becoming increasingly hampered, given the constraints on the industry, which are becoming more numerous and inescapable. I often liken it to being in a room with all four walls coming in and slowly squeezing you. Difficulties have included the massive ramifications of Brexit, and, although there may have been opportunities with quotas, there have been severe restrictions on the ability to recruit staff, which has forced skippers to look internationally, even as far as Southeast Asia. That has resulted in overseas staff being employed on inordinate salaries, and the administrative gymnastics alone that is required to obtain those staff is ridiculous and unsustainable.

Another wall is enforcement. The UK's Marine Management Organisation is now carrying out numerous stops on our vessels, with checks ranging from checking crew paperwork to checking to size of nets right down to the millimetre. Such stops interrupt work, have resulted in punitive fines and create even more frustration for an industry that already feels ignored. There is then perhaps the most literal squeeze of all, which is the lack of space in which to fish. In the Irish Sea, English fleets reach in from the east, Scottish fleets from the north and Irish fleets from the south. In the centre, the Isle of Man has primacy. That could once have been settled through agreements between those who fish the waters, but our fishermen are now left with a tightly constrained stretch of sea. The squeeze is all too real. Despite that, our Agriculture Minister, who should be standing up for those fishermen and saying, "I've got your back", is consulting on proposals that would make that small stretch of sea even smaller. He has already failed to deliver the fishing and seafood development programme, and our fishermen cannot afford another squeeze.

Our fishermen are not asking for special treatment. Rather, they are asking for the space in which to work, people to crew the boats and a fair chance to make a living. Perhaps the next time that we have some fish for our dinner, we can spare a thought for those who are working and how we can possibly help them more.

Mr Speaker: Justin McNulty has sought leave to present a public petition in accordance with Standing Order 22. The Member has up to three minutes in which to speak.

Mr McNulty: The petition was launched by Catherine Sherry's brother, Martin O'Hanlon, who is in the Public Gallery with his aunts Anne and Marie Garvey. It has been signed by 6,562 people to date. The petition states:

If you stand at the front of Parliament Buildings and look west, you will see Belfast City Hospital. The patients in ward 10 North, which is the City Hospital's blood cancer ward, and their families can see Stormont from their window, but they cannot see whether their political leaders care about them. Life-saving CAR-T treatment is available in 21 NHS hospitals in England and in hospitals in Scotland and Wales, and it has been delivered in St James's Hospital in Dublin since December 2021. It is now available in Galway, but it is not available here.

Two years ago, Catherine was a patient in ward 10 North. The life-saving treatment that Catherine needed was available in Dublin, one hour down the road, but our political leaders did not take care to make it available here or allow all-island access to it in Dublin or Galway. Instead, Catherine had to travel to London by aeroplane on three occasions, which separated her from her family when she needed their love and support the most. She was exhausted, immunocompromised and fighting for her life. As she sat waiting in ward 10, looking at Stormont, Catherine asked: "Why is the treatment available elsewhere but not here? What are politicians doing? No other family should have to go through this".

Catherine's family started this petition, and the thousands of people who have signed it have demonstrated their support. Many have commented that cancer services here can and should be better. We deserve better. It is imperative that political leaders step forward to provide that life-saving cancer treatment here and allow all-island access to treatment through cooperation with centres in the South.

The policy priorities that were published recently by Leukaemia and Lymphoma NI (LLNI), a policy and advocacy group that comprises patients, their families, clinicians and researchers, have clearly defined what is needed. LLNI calls for the local delivery of CAR-T and other cellular therapies, a review of barriers to CAR-T delivery and the publication of a clear road map to local commissioning in the current mandate.

Political leadership is needed, and the time to act is now. The thousands of people who signed the petition want political leaders to act now. After all, any one of us or our loved ones could need CAR-T treatment in future. I am very proud to table this petition on behalf of Catherine Sherry's family and the 6,562 people who have signed it to date.

Mr Speaker: I will forward the petition to the Minister of Health and send a copy to the Committee.

Ms K Armstrong: I beg to move

Mr Speaker: The Business Committee has agreed that there will be no time limit on this debate.

Ms K Armstrong: On behalf of the Deputy Chairperson of the Committee for Communities, I seek the support of the House for the motion to extend the Committee Stage of the Housing (Amendment) Bill until 11 December 2026.

The Bill was introduced on 30 June by Colm Gildernew MLA and completed its Second Stage on 21 September, when it was referred to the Committee for Communities. The Committee's call for evidence ended on 3 September, after being agreed at our meeting on 2 July. At that same meeting, the Committee received a briefing from the sponsor, and, last week, it received briefings on the Bill from researchers from the Assembly's Research and Information Service (RaISe).

At Second Stage, I indicated that, throughout this mandate, the Committee has maintained a strong focus on housing need, temporary accommodation, homelessness prevention and the services that support people who are homeless or are at risk of becoming homeless, and that the Committee is acutely aware of the significant challenges associated with homelessness in Northern Ireland and the profound impact that housing insecurity can have on individuals, families and communities.

On 30 June 2026, the total number of households on the Northern Ireland Housing Executive's waiting list with no existing Housing Executive or housing association tenancy at was 50,891, comprising 92,700 individuals. Of those, 39,617 households, comprising 73,223 individuals, were in housing stress, and 34,091 households, comprising 64,417 individuals, had full-duty application status, meaning that they are considered to be statutorily homeless.

The principle of intervening earlier to prevent homelessness is a policy intention of the Bill. The Bill proposes to amend the definition of "threatened with homelessness" in the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 to place a duty on the Housing Executive to provide support for people who:

That replaces the duty to provide support for those who:

It is the sponsor's view that that will reduce the likelihood of people becoming homeless and increase the likelihood of them being able to stay in their current home, where interventions are successful, rather than them having to rely on temporary accommodation.

The cost of temporary accommodation to the Housing Executive in 2023-24 was almost £39 million, and there was a £31 million increase in temporary accommodation expenditure between 2018-19 and 2023-24. Any increase or decrease in that spend raises important questions that warrant our full examination. Themes and discussions so far demonstrate that there are a number of areas that merit detailed consideration. Those include whether the proposed 60-day period represents the appropriate point for statutory intervention; the likely operational implications for the Housing Executive and potential financial consequences; the interaction between earlier intervention and potential pressures on temporary accommodation and existing housing supply; and whether provision should be made for the operation of the legislation to be reviewed after implementation.

Those, and the potential positive implications that the Bill may have for homelessness, as well as how the Bill may interact with any future homelessness commission, which was announced recently by the Minister for Communities, are why it is important that the Committee Stage provides sufficient time for effective scrutiny. The Committee must consider the submissions that it has received, identify matters that require further examination and hear oral evidence from relevant stakeholders. For example, we are yet to hear from people with lived experience of homelessness, organisations providing homelessness and housing support services, the Housing Executive, relevant professional and representative organisations, and other stakeholders with experience in this area. We must then consider that evidence collectively; return to the Bill sponsor, the Department and the Housing Executive where clarification is required; consider any potential amendments; undertake formal clause-by-clause scrutiny; and agree our report and commend it to the Assembly. As with many other Committees, the Communities Committee has an extensive programme of legislative and wider scrutiny work ahead of it this season. The proposed extension will allow the Committee to carry out those responsibilities alongside robust scrutiny of the Bill.

It is important to say that the Committee has no interest in delaying the Bill unnecessarily and is acutely aware that the end of the mandate is fast approaching. If we are in a position to conclude our scrutiny and report to the Assembly before 11 December, having been satisfied that key issues have been examined effectively, we will do so. The purpose of the motion is to provide the Committee with the necessary flexibility to do its job thoroughly and ensure that the legislation that returns to the House has benefited from robust and evidence-based scrutiny. The Committee wants to ensure that the Bill achieves the correct balance between effectiveness and practicality and, ultimately, that it works for the people whom it is intended to support. For those reasons, on behalf of the Committee for Communities I ask Members to support the extension of the Committee Stage of the Housing (Amendment) Bill until 11 December 2026.

Mrs Erskine: I beg to move

Mr Speaker: The Business Committee has agreed to allocate up to one hour and 30 minutes to 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.

Mrs Erskine: The 29 June was a watershed moment. It was a day on which my constituents witnessed the slaughter of 51 cattle outside Fivemiletown. It was a day on which a line in the sand was drawn. Farmers have had enough. The agricultural community has had enough. Rural life has felt under attack. Whilst there has been unprecedented protest — the union that represents farmers passed a motion of no confidence in the Agriculture Minister — the voices of that protest have still not been listened to, and their concerns have not been dealt with.

It gives me no great pleasure to move this motion of no confidence in a Minister, not least because the Minister is one who is supposed to represent our farming community. Why are we here? We have a Minister who is more concerned with penalising farmers than promoting them and with finding fault on the farm than finding answers in his Department.

I turn to the Fivemiletown cattle cull, as it has euphemistically been described. Let us be absolutely clear on what the debate is about and what it is not about. It is not a debate about whether a court order should be obeyed: of course it should. It is not a debate about whether animal welfare offences should be taken seriously: of course they should. It is not a debate about whether DAERA staff should be subjected to abuse or intimidation: they should not. It is a debate about judgement, leadership, transparency and ministerial accountability. It is about the response from the Minister when the public began asking serious questions, and that response differed from the one that I originally received.

Whilst the news cycle has moved on, my community has not. The issue is still discussed, and it is felt as rawly as on that summer's day in June. It is not me or the DUP saying that we have lost confidence in the Agriculture Minister: DAERA and the Minister have had multiple no-confidence motions brought to their door. The questions raised were not orchestrated by political opponents; they were basic questions from the man and woman on the street, and they arose from the Department's actions. Nobody in the Chamber is disputing the authority of the court or the seriousness of the animal welfare offences that led to the deprivation order. The issue before us today is different. It is about how the order was handled by DAERA; how decisions were made; what alternatives were considered; what happened on the ground in Fivemiletown; what the Minister knew and when he knew it; and, crucially, how he responded when serious concerns were brought to his attention.

People witnessed what happened — it happened in their community. They heard the gunshots, they saw what was happening, and they are still deeply distressed by what they witnessed and heard. My constituents contacted me because they wanted answers. They deserved answers. They did not deserve to feel that their concerns were being dismissed or that their account of what they had witnessed was somehow less credible than the account of a Department. That is where the Minister failed.

I wrote to the Minister on 30 June, the day after the operation began, seeking answers. The response laid blame at my constituents' door and doubled down on how DAERA handled the operation. I wrote again on 17 July. I did so because I believed that something had gone seriously wrong and that the Department needed to provide clarity. Minister, in the Chamber, I have heard you mock Members for fighting for the sake of their TikTok videos. I did not do that. I gave you the opportunity to listen to the concerns that I brought to you, but you failed. Statements came only after public pressure mounted, questions were answered only when they could no longer be avoided, and the public were left trying to piece together what had happened from media reports and statements and the accounts of those who had been there. That is not transparency; that is not accountability; and that is not good enough from a Department whose Minister repeatedly tells us that animal welfare is at the heart of his responsibilities.

In commissioning an independent external review, the Minister himself eventually recognised that questions remained unanswered, but commissioning a review after public outrage is not the same as providing leadership when concerns first emerge. The Minister's initial response mattered. His instinct should have been to listen; his instinct should have been to investigate; and his instinct should have been to reassure constituents and establish the facts.

Instead, too often, the response appeared to defend the Department first and ask questions later: that is a fundamental problem. When concerns were raised about what happened in Fivemiletown, the Minister praised the staff involved, and, later, he accused those seeking answers of creating a "frenzy of abuse". Defending staff from abuse does not mean that Ministers should shield decisions from legitimate scrutiny. We can condemn threats and abuse while still demanding answers. We can respect public servants while questioning the procedures that they followed and whether those were appropriate. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are essential to a healthy democracy, and that is why the motion is not about scapegoating individual officials; it is about political responsibility.

The Minister is the person who is accountable to the Assembly for his Department. When something goes badly wrong, a Minister cannot simply say that his officials made the decisions and that he will await a review. Ministerial responsibility means taking ownership; it means recognising when confidence has been lost. For me, the relationship between DAERA and the farming community matters enormously. Our farmers are not an inconvenience that has to be managed. They are the people who feed us. They are the people who care for our countryside. They are the people who live with the consequences of the decisions made in this Building.

Across Fermanagh and South Tyrone, I have heard repeatedly from people who feel that the Department has become detached from the realities faced by those who work on the ground. Fivemiletown has become the symbol of the breakdown of trust. The images and accounts from those days shocked people right across Northern Ireland. They shocked farmers and rural communities, and they raised serious questions about the Department's approach to animal welfare and whether it was being applied consistently and appropriately. We cannot have one standard for a farmer who has been scrutinised by DAERA and another standard when DAERA itself is carrying out an operation. If animal welfare is genuinely a priority, it must be the priority in every circumstance. That means not simply asking whether an animal was ultimately killed humanely; it means asking whether the entire process that led to that point was properly planned, proportionate and designed to minimise fear, distress and suffering. The public are entitled to have answers to those questions, and they deserve answers that are based on evidence, not spin, not political point-scoring and not defensive press releases. The Minister is responsible for his own policies. The Minister is responsible for DAERA's procedures, and he is responsible for restoring confidence when those policies and procedures are called into question.

Indeed, the Minister has commissioned a review. The findings of the review must be acted on. I am not asking the House to prejudge the findings of the review; I am asking the House to judge something that has already happened. We are judging the Minister's handling of a crisis. We are judging the failure to provide timely and transparent answers. We are judging the failure to recognise the legitimate concerns of the constituents from the outset. We are judging the loss of confidence that has followed. Leadership is about more than wanting somebody else to tell you whether you got it right; leadership is about recognising when the public has lost confidence in you, and the reality is that confidence has been lost. That is why we are standing here today telling the Minister —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mrs Erskine: — that confidence has been lost.

Ms Murphy: What happened in Fivemiletown has had a lasting impact on the local community and the entire constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone. People witnessed the destruction of cattle on land that many of them travel past day by day. Many, including children, have been left with distressing memories and a deep sense of unease about how those events were allowed to unfold. The issues raised go far beyond the events of that day or the 48-hour period that ensued. Why did DAERA take the course of action that it did? Were its policies and procedures followed? Given the Department's previous involvement with the farm, could intervention have happened sooner?

During an emergency sitting of the AERA Committee in August, DAERA informed us that there was a court order in place, and the Department had a legal duty to act. However, that does not remove the need to examine the decisions made beforehand, the level of oversight exercised or the manner in which the operation was conducted. Those matters deserve careful scrutiny, based on all the evidence available.

For the people of Fivemiletown and south Tyrone, the story has not been viewed from a distance. It unfolded in a close-knit, rural community where relationships run deep and where many in the local area know the family involved. As a result, local people have had to deal not only with what they witnessed but with the lasting impact that it has had on the community's confidence.

Farmers must be able to trust that, when difficult situations arise, the Department will act fairly, proportionately and with respect for everyone involved. That trust is particularly important in rural communities where engagement with DAERA is a regular part of day-to-day and weekly life. Once it is damaged, rebuilding it is not straightforward. The concerns do not disappear when an operation such as that ends. They continue to be discussed across the farming community, in local marts and even in local shops.

Dr Martin Blake, who is undertaking the review into the operation, met informally with the AERA Committee a number of weeks ago. The scope of the external review that he outlined provides an opportunity to examine not only what happened during the operation but the sequence of decisions that brought matters to that point. The review will consider governance, accountability, animal welfare and the wider public interest. That breadth is essential because a narrow examination of the final two days of the operation could never complete or provide a full picture of what occurred.

It is right that the process is evidence-led. The testimony of those who were present, alongside the accounts of those responsible for key decisions, will be central to establishing the facts. Anyone with relevant, first-hand information has the opportunity to contribute, and I know that Dr Blake was very keen to engage directly with anybody who had seen the incident first-hand.

When the review is complete, the public will expect a clear explanation of what happened, the basis for the decisions that were taken, where accountability rests and, most importantly, what action will be taken and not simply a record of events but a pathway of actions. Where shortcomings are identified, the Minister must set out what steps will be taken, who will deliver them and how the progress will be measured.

I understand the strength of feeling behind the motion. The Minister now faces a significant task in restoring public confidence. The people of Fivemiletown and the surrounding community deserve clarity, accountability and transparency.

Mrs Long: I would love to say that I am surprised that we are in the Chamber debating this silly motion today, but, given its genesis, I have to say that I am not. At a time when our institutions are under pressure and relations between communities are at a new low, I am almost incredulous that this is what is at the top of the DUP's priority list: castigating a Minister for doing his job.

Despite the performances that we have witnessed, let us be honest about the motivation behind the motion. It is not about empathy for farming, in which Andrew has invested millions of pounds during the mandate. It is not about a new-found commitment to animal welfare from the proposer because, just weeks ago, DUP Members lined up in the Chamber to defend dogs ripping foxes limb from limb in the name of sport. [Interruption.]

It is not about concern for Lough Neagh because the DUP has done all that it can to stop the nutrients action plan (NAP) and block the creation of an independent environmental protection agency. [Interruption.]

Two key practical measures that would curb the pollution of Lough Neagh and our other waterways. It is not even really about the serious issues around Fivemiletown, because the review that Andrew commissioned to examine that has not even concluded, yet the DUP wants to turn the Chamber into some kind of kangaroo court, irrespective of the potential findings. [Interruption.]

No similar motions were brought when other court orders were implemented and other culls were undertaken, whether that was under Michelle O'Neill or Michelle McIlveen. What the motion is really about is that the party to my right cannot stand having an AERA Minister who takes his climate change and environmental responsibilities seriously and cares about all of his brief.

Mr Buckley: Will the Member give way?

Mrs Long: This is a political stunt to distract people from the internal difficulties of the party to my right: a DUP that is mired in scandal and sleaze and that is led by the nose by Jamie Bryson.

Mr Buckley: Will the Member give way?

Mrs Long: I am embarrassed and angry that the Assembly's time is being wasted on this motion when there are so many genuine issues that we ought to be trying to address —

Mr Buckley: Will the Member give way?

Mrs Long: — in the final few months of an already shortened mandate.

I have made it clear that I will not be giving way.

There are half a million people on waiting lists in Northern Ireland today. Some 25,000 food parcels are given to local children to stop them going hungry, while 60,000 people are experiencing some form of homelessness. Our roads are crumbling and our school buildings are falling apart. Those are real challenges that we have the power to address if some people could drag themselves out of the playground and into the present. Instead, we are here wasting time on debating a sham motion that will achieve absolutely nothing.

The Assembly has got itself into a doom loop of late. If we do not pull back from the brink soon, I am really concerned that it will be too late. The people whom we serve want to see delivery, not distraction, and progress, not posturing. They want us to be better, not bitter. The reason that so many people are disillusioned with politics these days is because of days such as today, when they turn on the news and see the Chamber once again totally detached from the realities and being

used as a platform for personal attacks.

Let me finish by explaining to the Chamber what will change after the conclusion of the debate: nothing.

In February 2024, I made the decision to appoint Andrew Muir to ministerial office. My confidence in his ability to do that job has only grown in the time since.

My colleagues and I are proud of what he has achieved and of his diligence and professionalism in the face of abuse and heckling, including from the Member to my rear, all the time. Regardless of what the climate sceptics, flat-earthers and science deniers on the Benches to my right may say, of what any lobbyist outside the Chamber may say, of what those who heckle from behind may say and of what those who are happy to squabble while the environment burns may say, the end result will remain the same: Andrew Muir is the Minister of Agriculture, and he is going nowhere.

You can spend the rest of the hour and a half talking amongst yourselves about how terrible he is. Knock yourselves out. If you want pantomime politics, fine, but we will not be participating in a pantomime.

Members on these Benches have real jobs to do, constituents to serve and progress to deliver. That is what we will be spending our time doing over the next hour.

Some Members: Bye-bye. Bye-bye. [Laughter.]

Ms D Armstrong: That was quite a show.

I support the motion with a heavy heart but also with a deep sense of frustration on behalf of Northern Ireland's farming community. The events in Fivemiletown, and the Department's response to them, have exposed more than a single operational failure. Rather, they have exposed a failure of leadership, oversight and accountability at the very top of the Department. I am only sorry that the Minister is not here to listen to my concerns.

Mr Buckley: I thank the Member for giving way. Naomi Long mischaracterised a lot during her contribution. Notably, the motion was signed by 27 Members of the House, not by a singular party. Does the Member agree that, despite her talking about getting back to work, it is notable that Naomi Long has the lowest voting record of any Member in the House?

Mr Speaker: The Member has an extra minute.

Ms D Armstrong: I thank the Member for his intervention.

As the Ulster Unionist MLA for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, I hear directly from farmers about a growing disconnect between the Department and the people whom it is supposed to serve. There was a time when the Department stood beside them and understood rural communities. Today, too many of them tell me that they feel ignored, dismissed and treated as a problem, rather than as partners.

A Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs cannot lead effectively when he has become so disconnected from the people whose confidence he requires. Earlier this year, the Minister stated:

Whatever his intention, those remarks were widely viewed as dismissive of Northern Ireland's largest farming organisation. At a time when relationships needed to be strengthened, those comments served only to deepen divisions between the Minister and the farming community.

Mrs Erskine: I appreciate the Member giving way, because, like me, she is very close to the situation in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Will the Member agree with me that it is actually the Alliance Party that is detached from rural communities in that it cannot recognise that there is still a deep hurt and frustration over the way in which the Minister and DAERA handled the crisis? That is the issue: our rural communities have completely lost confidence in the Minister to act on their behalf.

Ms D Armstrong: I thank my MLA colleague from Fermanagh and South Tyrone for that intervention. Yes, that is resonating throughout all our connections and contacts with the farming community. Fivemiletown has become the clearest symbol of that breakdown in trust. That horrendous cull of 51 cattle in Fivemiletown shocked not only the local farming community but people right across Northern Ireland and beyond. The distress caused to the farming community and the widespread public concern surrounding that operation have left a lasting impact.

We are told that an independent external review will get to the truth of what happened, but I have to ask the Assembly this question directly: is that review truly independent? Dr Martin Blake, the reviewer appointed by the Department, is a former Chief Veterinary Officer of the Republic of Ireland. DAERA's gifts and hospitality register shows that Dr Blake personally hosted Robert Huey, Northern Ireland's then Chief Veterinary Officer, at a recurring biannual meeting and lunch with DAERA's veterinary service animal health group as recently as November 2022 and again hosted a lunch connected to a UK/Ireland bilateral Chief Veterinary Officers meeting in December 2023. Senior DAERA officials Neal Gartland and Catherine Fisher were invited to that same table. Mr Huey referred, on the record, to Dr Blake as "my colleague" to an Assembly Committee. Those were men who climbed mountains together for charity, who sat on panels together and who worked institutionally together for years. I do not say that that provides bias, but I do say this: when the farming community is already reeling from what it witnessed in a field in Fivemiletown, the very least that that community is owed is a reviewer with no professional history whatsoever with the people who are being reviewed. Instead, the Department hand-picked a veterinary insider who set his own terms of reference and gave farmers and witnesses nothing more than an email address to submit evidence to. There was no public hearing, no date and no transparency.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Member for giving way. She talks about the very least the Minister could do. I think that the very least that he could do is listen to this debate, during which he could hear about the very genuine concerns of the farming and fishing communities and rural communities and how those communities have no confidence in him. It is absolutely outrageous that the Alliance Party leader called the motion, which highlights genuine concerns, a "political stunt". Quite frankly, what is the definition of a "political stunt"? It is filling your Benches and then storming out like children.

Ms D Armstrong: I thank the Member for her intervention. Yes, it is regrettable that the Alliance Party chose to walk away. Its Members are no doubt listening on-screen now, but I would have much preferred them to be in the Chamber to hear the debate.

Regardless of where responsibility for individual decisions ultimately lies, responsibility for the Department rests with the Minister. That is the principle of ministerial accountability, yet, throughout this controversy, farmers have not seen a Minister taking ownership of what occurred under his watch. Instead, they have seen questions deferred, concerns unanswered and responsibility pushed elsewhere. We have also witnessed actions from a Minister whose focus is increasingly on addressing environmental initiatives while the fundamental production side of the agriculture industry —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Ms D Armstrong: — is disproportionately regulated and penalised.

There is so much more that I could say. It is not a personal attack on the Minister. It is about the principle that Ministers must be accountable —

Mr Speaker: Thank you.

Ms D Armstrong: — to the Departments that they lead. I support the motion.

Mr O'Toole: First of all, I should say that I am speaking in lieu of our member of the AERA Committee, Daniel McCrossan, who, as people will understand, is at the High Court to hear the A5 judgement, which will come in momentarily.

As an Opposition, we believe, clearly, in the idea of accountability, and we believe that creating a culture of accountability in our politics is fundamental to how we should be doing things. There are very real questions about the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs' handling of the Fivemiletown cull. It is important that Ministers be held accountable for what happens in their Department. The farming community and others who care about animal welfare have grave concerns about the way that that incident was handled. There are questions to be answered by the Department about the review that is being conducted.

We will not support the motion of no confidence today, but that is not to say that the Minister should not be answering questions. Nor is it to say — I am going to say this — that I think that that was an appropriate response to the motion.

Mrs Erskine: Will the Member give way?

Mr O'Toole: Give me one second and I will give way.

People can ask about the motivations of the DUP in moving the motion, as the DUP did when I brought motions of no confidence in Ministers of that party. At that time, I said that ministerial accountability was important, whether you stand up and robustly defend the Minister of your own party or not. That still goes today. Even if I have questions and doubts about the sincerity of some of what is being said, ministerial accountability is important. The leader of the Alliance Party also has a point when she says that the public view the pantomime here with contempt. You will not make that better by pulling a stunt such as the Alliance Party did today. Even if they have profound concerns about the nature of the motion and the motivation behind it, simply getting up, walking out and engaging in your own pantomime is only likely to encourage the sense of contempt among the public, so I am concerned about the actions that just took place.

The Alliance leader also said earlier, in the Great Hall, in response to questions from the media, that the only person who had to have confidence in the Environment Minister was her. That is not true. For the record, this place has a mechanism whereby confidence can be expressed or no confidence can be expressed in a Minister. It requires thresholds that are a form of cross-community consent for motions of no confidence to succeed and sanctions to be imposed on Ministers, but that is not the same as saying that only one politician matters in relation to confidence in a Minister. Frankly, that is not an acceptable thing to say.

To go back to the main substance of the motion, I will give way, briefly, to Mrs Erskine.

Mrs Erskine: The motivation behind the motion is for my constituents. This morning, in the Chamber, Alliance Members have turned their backs on my constituents by not listening to the real concerns that the agricultural community has. In my speech, I clearly outlined the reasons why the DUP moved the motion: it is because DAERA and the Minister have lost the trust of rural communities. If the effective Opposition cannot see that and support the motion, it has a problem, too.

Mr O'Toole: Do you know what? You are entitled to stand up and make that point. That is why I gave way to you. I do not agree with it, but I also have no difficulty with debate. That is why I am slightly stunned that the Alliance Members got up and walked out. While bemoaning childishness and pantomime in our politics, they engaged in something that can only be seen as a panto stunt. That is not to say that I agree with the motion. As a constructive Opposition, we do not agree with everything that comes before us, and we have challenged every single Executive party at different times.

Let me be clear — [Interruption.]

Let me be clear about why we will not support the motion of no confidence. First, while I acknowledge that there are questions about the Fivemiletown cull, there are also questions about the Minister's performance in relation to farming and the key ecological challenges that face this place. We think that a condition of entering the Executive should have been progress on the environmental protection agency. The Alliance Party is right when it says that the DUP has been instrumental in blocking the development of an independent environmental protection agency.

The Member smirks, but I do not mind calling anybody out on these things. The Member smirks, but we have one of the biggest ecological crises on the continent of Europe. Does anybody disagree with that? Lough Neagh? The scandal of Lough Neagh should shame our entire politics. It is utterly, utterly unacceptable. We had expected and wanted to see faster progress on the nutrients action plan and all the other urgent areas in the Lough Neagh action plan. Part of that, and of improving our environmental governance more broadly, was the creation of an independent environmental protection agency, which was first agreed in New Decade, New Approach. More than half a decade on, we still have no progress. The proposer's party is a part of blocking that, so the Alliance leader had a point when she said that some of these things were being blocked by the DUP.

However, it would have been much better if her party had remained in the Chamber, made those points and debated the merits or otherwise of the motion before us today.

Our environment and rural communities face huge change. We are facing climate breakdown and rising cost inputs, which are impacting on ordinary farmers and their families and on their ability to earn an income. We also face multiple, interlocking ecological crises. All of those are really important.

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr O'Toole: Today's motion is not an appropriate or constructive way in which to deal with it —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr O'Toole: — but getting up and walking out of the Chamber is not an appropriate way to improve our politics either.

Mr Gildernew: As I rise to speak in the debate, I am conscious that a critical issue for my constituency is being decided by the court. I am extremely hopeful that it will arrive at the decision on the A5 that my constituents need.

The situation that we are discussing today caused huge concern and, indeed, distress in my constituency. Coming from a farming background, I know that it is very difficult to look at what happened and not think, "Surely it must be done in a better way" and "There must be a better way in which that could have been done". In that context, we absolutely need to see openness and transparency and get answers about what went on. I am disappointed that the Minister has not remained in the Chamber to hear the concerns of my constituents in that regard.

The questions arising from the incident go well beyond what happened on the day. We need to understand how the chain of events unfolded and why a better way was not found at some point. This is not just a story for agriculture. People in the local area witnessed what went on, and that cannot be right. When the review is complete, we need to see a clear account of what happened, and we need to ensure that lessons are learned and that the learning is implemented, because we cannot witness such scenes in our countryside ever again.

Mr Wilson: This is my tenth month in the House, and I am astounded by what I have just witnessed. I am encouraged by — I have seen this — how my party and the Members on these Benches never shy away from debate. We think of our Ministers, one of whom is here, who never shy away from debate. Gordon Lyons, who was put through the wringer, never shies away from debate. Yet, here we have a situation where a monologue has been presented, and Alliance has simply left the Building.

Mr Givan: Will the Member give way?

Mr Wilson: I will absolutely give way. I am not afraid to give way, and I will put that on the record.

Mr Givan: Certainly not to your colleagues at least.

I thank the Member for his comments. He is right: my colleague Gordon Lyons and I had motions of no confidence brought against us. Both of us stayed and made our case. Both of us were held to account. Both of us explained our positions. Neither of us ran away.

Mr O'Toole talked about the need for certain thresholds to be met when it comes to exclusion. He did not apply those thresholds when it came to voting for a motion of no confidence in me. The leader of the Opposition applies a different standard to the Alliance Minister than he did to me as Education Minister.

Mr Wilson: I fully agree. It is not lost on me that, when we look at the Justice Department — I am sure that Minister Givan would not be in a comfortable position if, for instance, half the school body was not in attendance — we see that half the prison population is on remand consistently and has been throughout the past year. That is certainly not something to crow about. That would not be the case under our Ministers, who would very quickly take adequate action.

Mr Speaker: Can we get back to the debate, please?

Mr Wilson: Yes, I will get back to the debate.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion of no confidence that was tabled by my party, and I thank everybody who signed it. I am the only MLA for Newry and Armagh who signed it. I take that to mean that I am the only person listening to the farming community in what is a considerably rural constituency.

The decision of the Ulster Farmers’ Union to include Minister Muir in its vote of no confidence was a seismic and unprecedented moment. It symbolised the complete breakdown of trust between Northern Ireland's agriculture community and the Department, led by the Alliance Party, which has gone AWOL today. The body that represents the collective voice of the farming community clearly signalled its discontent. I agree with the Ulster Farmers’ Union in that regard.

How did we get here? When appointed, the Minister promised to do things differently, and he certainly kept that promise. He has done things differently today by walking out of the Chamber. He has also done things differently by uniting such a broad swathe of people against him. Time does not permit me to cover every failure, so I will focus on a few of the most glaring examples. The initial roll-out of the NAP proposals united the farming community in anger in a way that I have rarely witnessed during my time in public life. Then, there is the TB situation. Herds continue to be devastated while taxpayers continue to foot a growing compensation bill. Even after securing an additional £4 million for the regional pilot, the Minister has little to show for it in either scope or delivery. What other Minister could receive £4 million yet fail to accelerate progress? My colleague Minister Lyons is in the Chamber. When he gets £4 million, he spends it for the benefit of the community.

I have left the worst to last: the farce at Fivemiletown, where 51 cattle were shot dead in a botched operation that left the public disgusted and the Department's reputation in tatters. Surprisingly, it was done in the name of animal welfare. Just as hapless as the events on the ground was the tone-deaf nature of the Minister's response. As a member of the AERA Committee, I was stunned by the lack of transparency and accountability and the complete failure to accept that the Department had done anything wrong. Simply brushing off legitimate questions by saying that the review will cover this, that or the other did not inspire confidence.

I cut short my family break to join the Committee meeting, but key staff did not do so. They did not show up. I felt that there was a complete over-reliance by the Minister on his officials to his left and right. He often looked at them for support and answers. I do not feel that the Minister adequately responded to the level of anger that existed in Northern Ireland's rural community and, indeed, that pushed into Northern Ireland's urban communities, where animal welfare concerns are perhaps felt most keenly.

With a cover story that had as many holes as a sinking ship, the cattle cull controversy was the straw that broke the camel's back for our farming community. That has been demonstrated by the strength of subsequent protests. That issue has not gone away. The depth of feeling has not gone away, and, just because the House may choose to debate other issues, it does not mean that the issue does not matter to those with a keen interest in our agriculture community as much as it did when the event took place.

I assure the Minister that it is not just so-called TikTokers who have lost patience, and some in the Alliance Party are the greatest TikTokers to ever walk the earth. I will put that on the record. I have been contacted by many constituents from all community backgrounds who are appalled by the events of recent months. That makes it even more shameful that not one nationalist representative has signed the motion. Once again, the DUP is left to be the voice for many right-thinking people in nationalist communities. Perhaps that says more about the Alliance Party's relationship with nationalism and republicanism than with anyone else.

Confidence is the operative word, and Minister Muir has completely lost the confidence —

Mr Speaker: Time is up.

Mr Wilson: — of the agriculture community.

Ms Forsythe: I was going to open my remarks by thanking the Minister for individual pieces of work that he has helped me with, but, since he has stormed out of the Chamber as part of the Alliance Party's political stunt, I will not even bother with that, to be honest.

As the only South Down MLA to have signed the motion, I am proud to stand here and speak up for our farmers, fishermen and rural community. I support the motion. The Alliance Party leader called the motion "silly" and a "sham", and her general tone was absolutely outrageous. It showed how detached her party is from our rural communities and agri-food sector in Northern Ireland.

Time and time again, the Minister has failed to listen to farmers and give them a voice. He has taken a specific direction that, understandably, has led to farmers passing votes of no confidence in him. We saw that with NAP and the inheritance tax matter. I know that not everything is devolved, but the farming community is looking for its Agriculture Minister to speak up on its behalf on what such things mean for farmers and their businesses. As my colleague Gareth Wilson said, for so many in that community, the cattle cull earlier this year was the straw that broke the camel's back. My colleague Deborah Erskine described in detail how she had given the Minister the opportunity to answer questions. She had done it quietly, as a constituency representative, through correspondence back and forward multiple times. Honest answers could have come out if the Minister had taken the matter seriously. The situation should never have escalated, but it did, and my colleague spoke to it well. She has been a strong local representative, and I know that the people of Fermanagh are glad that she has given them voice. I was down in Clady a few weeks ago, and it was the number-one thing that people spoke to me about.

The motion is about having no confidence in the Minister. I put on record that it represents more than just the farming community; it represents the fishing industry as well. Fishermen across the United Kingdom were some of the loudest campaigners for Brexit. They wanted to take back control of British waters. The failure to deliver Brexit for the United Kingdom has failed them badly. The fishing industry is under immense pressure across the board.

Dr Aiken: I thank the Member very much indeed for taking an intervention. Is she aware that, every time that we have raised issues to do with the Windsor framework in the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, the Alliance Party, especially the Minister, has always said, "No, that is Brexit's problem"? The Minister does not listen to the fishermen or the farmers. He does not listen to anybody.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Member for that intervention. I agree, and the fishermen and farmers whom I represent agree.

The fishing industry is on its knees. It is being cut from all directions. It faces quotas and increased fuel prices. As we come to the end of the calendar year, it stands on a cliff edge of visa pressures. We have seen the squeeze on Isle of Man visas. Led by my colleague Michelle McIlveen, our party made strong representations on that. The Minister went to the Isle of Man and got his photograph taken, but he did not feed back to the fishermen or to any of us what came of that visit. The consultation on the fisheries management plan closed recently; once again, he is squeezing the waters in which our fishermen can fish. The Minister has lost the confidence of the fishing industry. He has lost the confidence of the farming industry. The fact that he and his party colleagues would not even stay in the Chamber to listen to the debate is, frankly, disgraceful.

I do not know whether I heard the leader of the Opposition correctly, but what I heard was that it was wrong to table the motion. It is OK to table no-confidence motions against DUP Ministers, but there is a problem with this motion, because the DUP tabled it. We know the political circumstances that we are in. Unionists have the right to table motions of no confidence in the same way as everyone else in the Chamber.

Mr O'Toole: I did not say that you have no right to do it. I am sitting here and participating in the debate. I disagree with it, for the reasons that I outlined. I also disagree with and challenge the Alliance Party's walkout. I did not say that unionists cannot table a motion of no confidence. I said that you can table it and that it should be debated here. That is all.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Member for that intervention, but he questioned the motivation behind the motion. Our motivation is the farming industry, the rural communities, the fishing industry and all the people whom we represent. On this issue, I have to say, that includes unionists and nationalists, because there are a lot more in the agri-food sector than just those who traditionally vote for unionist parties.

I support the motion. My colleagues have done the right thing by tabling it. I am really disappointed that it has not been taken seriously. The Alliance Party will regret storming out. It will regret its political stunt here today, because the industries and the rural communities are watching.

Mr Burrows: Minister Muir is a decent man, but the motion is not about his personality. It is about his performance, and that has been catastrophically inept. It is also about his judgement and the signal that he sends to the farmers whom he is supposed to represent. What we have seen today is the staggering arrogance of the Alliance Party. The empty Chamber is also a staggering indictment of the other parties. If the debate were on something happening halfway around the world, the Sinn Féin Benches would be full, as would those of the Alliance Party and the Opposition. However, because it is about what happens in this country and about our farmers and our cattle, the Chamber is empty. That is an indictment of Members' priorities.

Mr Buckley: Will the Member give way?

Mr Burrows: I will give way once and no more.

Mr Buckley: Does the Member agree that the purpose of the motion was to demonstrate collective frustration at the Minister's performance, not to set one community against another? It was a demonstration of frustration at a lack of empathy and delivery for our rural constituents.

A Member: Will the Member give way?

Mr Burrows: Thank you. I want to make progress, but I will come back to that point in a moment. I will not give way any further.

The arrogance and tone-deafness of Alliance politicians is in contrast to our having the best farmers in the world. Diane Abbott — Members may be surprised to learn that I am not an Abbott fan — said that politicians have a job that is:

That is the polar opposite of the task that is faced by our farmers, who are out in all weathers, facing uncertainties and raw, physical danger. When I was in the Police Service, I used to go through the occurrences in the morning, and I recall how many farmers were injured or, sadly, on occasion, killed in the line of providing food for not only this country but our entire nation. They produce enough protein to feed 10 million people. We have the best farmers, and they deserve support. What did they get today? Nothing. Whether Members agree with the motion, the Alliance Party and its Minister did not even have the decency to listen to the representatives of farmers across the country. Farmers feel unsupported, over-regulated and not listened to. They feel that there was a catastrophic failure of judgement in the Fivemiletown slaughter.

Anyone hearing about the Fivemiletown slaughter would know immediately that it was a catastrophically dangerous operation. I know a little bit about firearms. The first time that one of those cows heard the crack of a rifle, there would have been mass panic. There would then have been moving targets running around, being shot at by people with rifles. If those rounds had missed, they would have travelled for miles. Shooting at moving targets without a solid backdrop, with rounds that would travel for a mile and a half should they miss, was the height of dangerousness. It was a public safety crisis, let alone inhumane treatment of cattle. What was the reaction, however? It was a bit like Minister Long's reaction to the catastrophic failures that led to a killer's being on the run. It was to pull up the drawbridge and say, "Nothing to see here. There are no issues". There are issues, however.

The Agriculture Minister's response to Fivemiletown was to denigrate the Ulster Farmers' Union, which represents farmers the length and breadth of this country from both sides of our community. That was outrageous and tone-deaf. Alliance seems to have no sense of the rural community. That is why our farmers believe that we have an Environment Minister but not an Agriculture Minister.

When we look at Alliance's response to the issues, we see a party that has failed the basic test of competence. It has failed our victims and our farmers. What, however, I find most troubling in a democracy is those empty Benches. I know in my heart that there are farmers who have different constitutional aspirations from mine. Who speaks for them? Nobody. The Opposition have become the Father Ted of Oppositions. They say, "Down with them, but, careful now, we'll not take any action", almost in defence of the Minister. Come on. The leader of the Opposition should provide the scrutiny that we need.

A lot of Members have spoken, and a lot more may wish to speak after me, so I will conclude. What happened in Fivemiletown was a catastrophe, inhumane and a risk to human beings. The response was tone-deaf, but it sums up the ineptitude and arrogance that has crept into the Alliance Party. I am glad to support the motion and to support our farmers.

Dr Aiken: I would like to have said that it is good to have the Minister here listening to the debate. Over many years in the Chamber, I have seen Ministers be held to account. Some Ministers have shown backbone by being here to listen to what is being said. It is up to Ministers to give as good as they get, to explain the situation, to defend their position or to answer questions. I was very surprised to see Alliance flounce out like that. We have been told time and time again by the party's leadership that it would not do pantomime-like activity, yet it has done just that. It is fundamentally important that Ministers be held to account. They need to be here. We have already seen an example this week of a Minister's being reticent to appear here.

One of the real issues — what this comes down to — is confidence in the system. Many Members will be aware of 'Yes Minister' and the degree to which Ministers seem to be manipulated by officials in that. Talk to anyone in agribusiness or the farming community about the Department of the Environment — people do not consider it to be the Department of Agriculture — and, time and again, they will say that the Minister is in the thrall of his officials and that the officials are setting the direction. Those officials seem to have forgotten the very clear dictum that officials are supposed to advise, and Ministers are supposed to decide. It seems that very little decision-making is going on in the Department of Agriculture. Time and again, the Department's direction of travel seems to be at the whim of the officials.

One thing about having politicians, not civil servants, running government is that Ministers are supposed to have their political antennae up for issues that are likely to be of considerable concern to the people. Someone who is supposedly a Minister of Agriculture must listen to farmers and the agribusiness community. If the agribusiness community is saying clearly that something is not right and that this is wrong, one would expect the Minister to listen, rather than to go out and castigate the people who are delivering the message. Doing that fundamentally undermines the faith and confidence that people have in the delivery of government.

We have heard a lot about how this place does not seem to deliver, but one of the fundamental aspects is for a Minister to actually do his job. If that means listening to the people whom he is supposed to represent, he should be doing that. I can tell you, right now, that our Health Minister listens avidly and that he will react to whatever has been said. To not even have an Agriculture Minister sitting in the Chamber as we discuss something that is so fundamental to animal welfare is extraordinary.

Mr Martin: Will the Member give way?

Mrs Erskine: Will the Member give way?

Dr Aiken: Certainly.

Mr Martin: The Member is very kind for giving way, and I thank him for that. Does the Member agree that, in a debate as important as this —? The cameras may not be picking up the fact that there are only five Members on the Benches opposite me. In fact, the Benches are practically empty from there, all the way round to Tim Gaston, over there. Does the Member agree —? [Inaudible.]

Mr Martin: You got a namecheck in there, Tim.

Does the Member agree that, if we were talking about some foreign war, those Benches would be full, but that, because the debate is about farmers in Northern Ireland, and because there has been a walkout from the Alliance Party, Members on the Benches opposite do not seem to care?

Dr Aiken: I thank the Member very much for that rather prolix intervention.

I will make one thing quite clear: I meet regularly with members of the farming community across South Antrim, and they have no confidence whatsoever in the Agriculture Minister or in the Department of Agriculture. They feel as though issues are being imposed on them, that there is no communication and that it is nearly as if there is an attempt to destroy their businesses when they have enough challenges as it is.

The substantial question that needs to be asked is this: what is the Minister scared of? Why is there an empty chair where he was? What is he hiding? What other issues are there? How many other cattle culls have there been? How many other issues concerning animal welfare has his Department failed on? How many failures have there been in the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) and checking on diseased animals? How many times have people raised significant environmental issues in laboratories that he has walked back on? Why is he scared of scrutiny? For that and no other reason, I have no confidence in him. I definitely do not have any confidence in the Alliance Party, which has flounced out rather than being here to expose itself to the scrutiny that any other Minister — well, most other Ministers — would.

Mr Gaston: What we witnessed this morning was not the first time that Andrew Muir scurried away from scrutiny. It was not the first time that he ran away and turned his back on the industry. That is why Mr Muir, who no doubt sits in his office, watching from afar, will be known as the worst Minister ever to have held the brief that contains agriculture. During the Minister's time in office, he has prioritised his environmental ideology over championing the industry that puts food on our plates. Under Muir, dither and delay are the order of the day, and endless consultations and talking shops take priority over safeguarding our food security.

The Northern Ireland agri-industry was built from the ground up through hard graft and long hours. Farming is not a nine-to-five job. It is a way of life for many of our family farms. Whilst I recognise that the Minister has a varied portfolio, time and time again the agri-industry has been let down by a Minister who simply either does not understand or does not care. At any opportunity, he would rather throw it under the bus than stand up for our hard-working farmers. At a time when many of our family farms across Northern Ireland are suffering from policies made by environmental lunatics, farmers need a Minister who will stand up for them and not merely be a parrot for the Department.

Unfortunately, that is what we witnessed in the aftermath of the massacre in Fivemiletown. Instead of listening to the public outrage, the Minister's first response was to publicly defend and praise the DAERA staff who were involved, before having to cow back, bow to public pressure and commence his not-so-independent external review. Prior to sending in the inhumane hit squad to kill 51 healthy animals, Andrew Muir knew that it was going to happen. What did he do? Absolutely nothing.

Dr Aiken: Will the Member take an intervention?

Mr Gaston: I am happy to give way.

Dr Aiken: Does the Member feel that there is a bit of a contradiction here? We have one Member from the Alliance Party bringing in the Hunting with Dogs Bill, yet we have a Minister who is quite happy to cull cattle that are perfect and which should not have been killed at all?

Mr Gaston: I agree 100% with the Member's intervention. Mrs Long did not take an intervention; I was going to make that very point to her. She was more interested in being angry and putting on a show than debating with Members. What happened in Fivemiletown torpedoed the myth that Andrew Muir has animal welfare as his top priority. Once he came under pressure and was rightly called out, the Minister, not for the first time, played the victim card, this time citing misogyny and sectarianism. Mr Muir, I have news for you: the farmers do not care about your religion; the farmers do not care what gender you identify as; and the farmers do not care what colour of dicky bow you turn up in. All they want is for you to turn up, stand with them and do your job. They want sustainable farms to pass on to their next generation.

Under Minister Muir, DAERA has, once again, been exposed as operating under the mantra, "Do as I say, not as I do". If the reckless actions that were deployed by the hit squad had been carried out by a farmer, their guns would have been lifted and they would have spent time behind bars. The Fivemiletown farmer had already found new homes for 21 of his cattle, yet, during its day-long massacre, the Department managed to shoot one of the cattle that had been sold. Minister, no amount of fudge could be cooked up and served with your external review that would cover the fact that a local farmer, who had already purchased six of the cattle, was willing to pay market value for the rest, but you decided, "No, those cattle should be slaughtered".

Look at the lunacy that was then exposed for all to see. Department officials allowed three calves that turned up in the days after the DAERA hit squad claimed that it had shot them, including a calf that had been shot through the neck, to be transferred to another farm. Why were the 51 cattle not allowed to face the same humane disposal?

All that we have to do is look at AFBI. He is a Minister for brushing things under the carpet. What did they do at AFBI? They said, "No, no. That happened long ago". What the Minister cannot answer to is this: the AFBI scandal was ongoing at the same time as is referred to by the court order —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Gaston: — that ended up in the culling of 51 healthy cattle.

Mr Speaker: I call Gerry Carroll.

Mr Gaston: It is time that Minister Muir was out of office.

Mr Lyons: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have clearly set out your expectations of Ministers who appear before the House. Did Minister Muir agreed to respond to this debate? What would be your ruling on a Minister who refused to attend or walked out of a debate? As Ministers, can we now pick and choose which debates we respond to? Do the rules apply to everyone, or can we simply do what seems right in our eyes?

Mr Speaker: There is an expectation that Ministers will respond to debates. Members will know that, each week at the Business Committee, I ask whether Ministers are available, and, each week, the Executive Office will indicate Ministers' availability. Obviously, Minister Muir was available today, which was the response at the Business Committee. The Alliance Party has made a decision to withdraw its Members, including the Minister, which is regrettable. I would like to have heard the Minister's point of view and his defence of his position. However, he has failed to do that.

Mr Carroll: I have said several times that no Minister, including the AERA Minister, is beyond reproach. Repeatedly, I have said that the approach adopted by the Executive and the Minister to Lough Neagh in particular has been pretty disastrous and hands-off. Lough Neagh, it is worth reminding ourselves, supplies 40% of our drinking water and is dying in plain sight. It is being strangled and suffocated by policies adopted by this and previous Executives. It is an ecological emergency needing urgent action, but the Minister has talked about a timescale of years or decades. The lough does not have decades. The plants and the animals do not have decades; the fishing community does not have decades; and anybody who uses the lough or lives near it does not have decades. It is worth reminding ourselves that we have had another summer of toxic algae and still no crackdown on agri-polluters. Despite the accusations thrown at the Minister by the party to my right, he has, in many ways, gone out of his way to accommodate and meet the demands of the UFU and the big agri-farmers, which is not the right approach.

DAERA's derogations let some farms spread up to 250 kg of waste per hectare, and those derogations are now before the courts. The Minister has said that the days of the Ulster Farmers' Union dictating government policy were over, but, when you do a bit of scrutiny and dig deeper, you see that that is anything but the case.

Mr Buckley: I thank the Member for giving way. Did the Minister of Agriculture give him his statement to read out today?

Mr Carroll: No. Unlike the Member, I do not need fake lawyers — people who stand on bin lids — to speak for me or give me advice. I can speak for myself. Thank you very much for your intervention.

I will go back to the point. When the industry pushed back on the Minister and his plans for the nutrients action programme, he responded to the wishes of the UFU and others in the sector and extended the consultation, handing it to a task and finish group with big farming and the agri-food industry at the table. I and many in the environmental sector would say that that was appeasing the big farming lobby.

There is still no independent environmental protection agency (EPA) in the North; we are the only part of these islands without one. Had the DUP Members tabled a motion that included some of that or all of it and had they banged the table and taken to the airwaves on those matters, I would have said, "Do you know what? There is much that I disagree with you about, but you are right about this, and I will vote for the motion", but they did not.

Mrs Erskine: Will the Member give way?

Mr Carroll: Maybe in a second, if I have time.

None of that, however, is stated in the motion. This is an attempt by the DUP to stoke another culture war. Fivemiletown is the pretext, but climate action is the real target, as some Members have let slip. The DUP likes to style itself as the champion of farmers, but, in reality, it champions big agri-food business and factory farms. Questions have been asked about Fivemiletown — people are right to do so — but there is silence on industrial-scale animal abuse by the likes of Moy Park. Nothing is said, and the Members to my right are offended when I and others dare to criticise Moy Park. They also like to kick migrant workers, but there is no recognition of the fact that it is the migrant workers in Moy Park who are making its fortune.

Mr O'Toole: Will the Member give way?

Mr Carroll: I will give way to the Member.

Mr O'Toole: I have made similar points. Big agri is not small farmers. Big agri, which intensifies for profit, has a lot to answer for. Does the Member agree that it would have been helpful had the Minister had the gumption to stay and make those points in the Chamber? It may be that he does not agree with them, but he is not here to tell us one way or the other. That is a shame, even if you agree or disagree with the motion.

Mr Carroll: Yes, I would have liked some answers to my points. I have been consistent about that.

The Member to my right wanted in.

Mrs Erskine: I thank the Member for giving way to me at last. He said that he has concerns that have not been answered by the Agriculture Minister. Our motion states that we have lost confidence in the Minister overall; it is not just about the Fivemiletown incident, though that is the catalyst for being here today. As I outlined clearly, a line has been drawn in the sand. Why can the Member not join us? If he has concerns that the Agriculture Minister has not acted, surely he also has no confidence in him.

Mr Carroll: I thank the Member for her intervention. My point is that the motion facilitates the anti-climate rhetoric of the DUP and others.

I have 30 seconds left, so I need to skip some stuff. There was the disastrous Going for Growth policy and other stuff. This is good for the DUP Ministers because it takes the spotlight off them. It is also worth saying that Minister Muir has faced homophobic abuse and that sectarian and misogynistic language has been directed at his officials: that should be condemned, challenged and called out. I missed Mrs Erskine's speech —

Mr Speaker: The Member's time is up.

Mr Carroll: — but I heard no word of condemnation from anyone in the DUP on that.

Ms Sugden: I rise as an independent with no party political baggage to respond to a legitimate motion in the Order Paper that was agreed by the Business Committee. The motion asks this simple question: "Do I have confidence in the Minister to lead this Department effectively?". No, I do not. As the unofficial opposition, I will be consistent in saying that I do not have confidence in any Minister to lead the Executive competently.

Having looked at the record, listened to those who have been most affected by the decisions of the Minister and his Department and considered the breadth of his responsibilities and remit, how can we honestly say that we have confidence? This is not about one incident; the concerns have been building for some time since he took office. Nowhere is that clearer than in agriculture. Last year, the Ulster Farmers' Union unanimously passed a vote of no confidence in DAERA. Following the Fivemiletown incident, it extended that directly to the Minister. You cannot simply brush that aside because you think that it is one stakeholder group being difficult. The UFU represents the body of farmers across Northern Ireland, and, when one of the principal organisations representing the people whom your Department exists to serve says that it no longer has confidence in you, how can any Member of the House continue to have confidence in you?

The Minister's response matters too. It is deeply regrettable that the Minister has walked out, because he is disrespecting every Member of the House who has a mandate. It is not about us as individuals but about the people whom we represent. I put this to the Members who are minded not to support the motion: after that stunt, how can you continue to have confidence in him when he will not come to the House?

Mr O'Toole: I thank the Member for giving way. We do not agree with the motion, but I am not sure that the motion will go to a Division. The Minister's party is not here, so I do not know how we can be expected to shout against it and express confidence in him if he has not even turned up.

Ms Sugden: I appreciate that, but by that determination we are saying that the House supports a motion of no confidence in the Minister, and so be it. The Minister is not here to defend himself, which will go down on him.

One organisation should not dictate government policy, but there is a difference between refusing to be dictated to and refusing to recognise when trust has finally broken down. In my constituency at the weekend, farmers were telling me, "Yes, Claire, vote for a motion of no confidence. We're not being heard." They feel that decisions are too often being made about them rather than with them. Bovine TB, for example, is not just a policy problem at a high level: entire herds are being lost across the country. It is restrictions on business and years of disruption and pressure on family farms and rural communities. There is an emotional cost to it too. Those are animals that have been bred, reared and cared for. Farmers care deeply about the welfare of their stock, and they should not be reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet.

Then there is the nutrients action programme. Farmers do not deny that water quality has to improve — they know that agriculture has responsibilities — but, when people were being asked to contemplate major changes to how they farmed without feeling properly involved in shaping those proposals, stakeholders were rightly angry. Engagement is not an obstacle to good environmental policy; it is essential to it. Rural communities feel that they need a strong advocate at the Executive table, someone making sure that policies are designed centrally to work in places where services are further away, public transport is limited and isolation is on a daily basis. Rural communities are honestly saying that they are not being listened to and not being heard. On that point, I have no confidence in the Minister.

I also have serious concerns about animal welfare despite the Minister talking to his record on that. The reality is that animals are suffering. There are too many cases where the response is slow, responsibilities are fragmented and people struggle to understand who will act. The Minister says that that is a council responsibility: Minister, the councils are not doing anything. Animals are suffering, therefore you have to take the lead on that, and you are not. If enforcement is inconsistent, if resources are inadequate and if legislation needs to be strengthened, do your job. That is where leadership is required. Fivemiletown brought those issues into sharp focus. Fifty-one healthy cattle were destroyed in circumstances arising, ironically, from an animal welfare case. How is killing 51 healthy cattle a response to animal welfare? The public looked at that and rightly asked, "How could the process end in such a way?".

We are hearing about proposals for a version of Lucy's law. Yes, that is welcome, and I appreciate the Minister doing that, but where is it? Where is the policy? We can talk about good intentions all we want, but it is outcomes that matter. That is nowhere more visible than at Lough Neagh. Again, I appreciate the Minister speaking out about that, but, year after year, we see that problem get worse and escalate. It is something that we need to get a grip on.

When I consider all that and ask myself whether I have confidence in the Minister to lead the Department effectively, the answer is no. It does not matter whether it is an Alliance Minister, a DUP Minister or a Sinn Féin Minister: I will stand up and say what is right, because that is my job as an MLA for East Londonderry.

Mr Speaker: I would have called the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs at this point, but he is not here, so I call Jonathan Buckley to make a winding-up speech on the motion.

Mr Buckley: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When preparing for the debate, my first question was whether the confidence of our communities in Andrew Muir as Agriculture Minister for Northern Ireland could sink any lower. That was what my mind focused on this morning, but the Alliance Party never fails to surprise us. This has been one of the most embarrassing acts in its time in office. Andrew Muir knows exactly what the feeling is among our rural constituents right now. He is not so aloof as not to understand their concerns — I am sure that he has an army of officials who understand just how fragile relationships are with our farming community — yet he chose to walk out. Along with every one of his party colleagues, he chose to turn his back on the Chamber, to turn his back on scrutiny and to turn his back on farmers' livelihoods. That is a damning indictment.

Naomi Long, his party leader, arrogantly came in and threw muck about this place like a muck spreader in a field. There was a bit for the DUP; a bit for the other unionists of the UUP and the TUV; and a bit for Sinn Féin and others. There was no accountability and no reflection on the Minister's actions. Mrs Long was keen to point out the flaws in debating the motion this week. The moment that there was a protest outside the Building during the summer, I pledged to table a motion of no confidence in Minister Andrew Muir. I said that it would not be party political, that it would be broad in its definition and that I would leave it in the Business Office to ensure that other Members had an opportunity to sign it. Twenty-seven Members signed the motion of no confidence. Twenty-seven Members therefore agreed:

I have not heard one contribution today that disagrees with that proposition. The Minister chose to turn his back and leave.

I thank the Ulster Unionist Party and the TUV for signing the motion. The Sinn Féin contribution was baffling, however, because I sensed in it huge outrage at what happened in Fivemiletown. I sensed in it a recognition of the loss of confidence in a Department and a Minister. I say this clearly: this is not about traditional party politics but about whether we have confidence in a Minister and his direction and leadership of a Department. I call on Sinn Féin Members to put action to their words and vote for the motion. Vote for the motion, because the Minister, in correspondence with my colleague Mrs Erskine straight after the event, tried to justify his Department's actions in Fivemiletown. Vote against a Minister who has shown complete disregard for the House and its scrutiny and for the farming community. That would be the courageous thing to do.

The first councillor to speak in outrage on the issue was a Sinn Féin councillor. That should tell us that the issue cuts across traditional party lines, but we will watch and the farming community will watch how every individual exercises their vote today. When we tabled the motion, I said, "We will see who speaks for the rural community. We will see who is prepared to stand up and speak for the farmer". Half of Sinn Féin's Members are missing from the Chamber, but how will they vote?

We have heard the official Opposition, the SDLP, meekly suggest, "We'll just stay silent. We'll not push it to a vote". Where is its backbone to stand up and speak out against a Minister who has lost control? It is pathetic, to say the least, that an official Opposition who were keen to sign motions against other Ministers to which no thresholds applied are missing in action. Again, the leader of the Opposition's vote today will tell us a lot.

Fivemiletown saw the culling — the shooting — of 51 healthy cattle. We see a Minister who attempted to smear, distract and mislead the public into believing that the 51 cattle were diseased, unhealthy and lame; it could not be further from the truth. In every image I have seen, they were healthy, calm and coherent animals. He tried to hide behind a court order that, he said, demanded the destruction of those animals: falsehood again. The court order did not call for the destruction of those animals.

We have a party that wants to smear others in its pursuit of animal welfare, yet, with a high-velocity rifle in one hand and a blue Bill in the other, it has to own the execution of those 51 cattle. Young calves were shot and left as walking wounded; cows were found dead in the field while starting to calf. There is no accountability for Mr Muir in the House today.

I have just been informed that the mailbox for the inquiry by Dr Blake is full of correspondence from farmers who want to get on record other instances where DAERA has acted disproportionately.

I say this to Minister Muir: you walked out of the Eikon Centre on thousands of farmers and turned your back to scuttle away from their concerns. You have been scuttling away ever since. You have attempted to deflect and blame others. It is time that you were held accountable.

Naomi Long came to the House to say that Alliance was in the business of getting on with its day job and is busy delivering for constituents and working on the practical realities of this place. She did not tell the Chamber that she has the lowest personal voting record of any Member of the House. She has the lowest physical presence of any Minister in the Executive. She has again been found missing in action. I would go further and say that she is the only member of the Executive who has confidence in the Agriculture Minister, but who is prepared to say it out loud? That will be the question today, because this is a Minister who has lost the farming community, whether it is about the nutrients action programme or the TB fiasco with healthy cattle, to the tune of millions of pounds, sent for slaughter every week because the Minister cannot get his act together to have a TB policy that protects livestock and the mental welfare of farmers.

It has been a hugely disappointing day for the rural constituents of Northern Ireland, but let them remember this clearly: let it never be said that the Alliance Party is a champion for their issues, their causes and their livelihoods. Let it never be said again that the Alliance Party cares about that portfolio. To Sinn Féin and the SDLP I say this: if Aontú were in the Chamber today, they would vote for the motion. I am watching carefully. This is the canary in the coal mine. We are watching exactly where you are. No distraction. What happened in the last week is an issue we can debate on another day. Today is about standing up for our rural constituents, and we will make sure that they know exactly how you vote.

Mr Speaker: The Business Committee has arranged to meet at 1.00 pm. I propose, therefore, by leave of the Assembly, to suspend the sitting until 2.00 pm.

Mr Givan (The Minister of Education): My Department works closely with the Education Authority (EA) to plan and develop specialist educational provision across Northern Ireland in line with assessed need and demographic trends. It is recognised that, for children and families, the statutory assessment process can feel lengthy in the context of a school year. However, recent improvements to the process have increased efficiency, with the EA meeting statutory timescales in around 80% of cases. Digitisation of the statutory assessment and placement process, including the online live portal, is intended to improve efficiency, transparency and access to live progress updates.

The EA has a statutory duty to secure educational placements for children and young people with a statement of special educational needs. Placements are determined individually through the statutory assessment and review process, taking account of each child’s assessed needs, professional advice, parental preference, available provision and school capacity. For the 2026-27 school year, more than 4,400 children with a statement of SEN in transition years secured a school place before the start of term. The EA continually reviews demand for specialist placements and undertakes strategic planning. The EA's area planning, placement and commissioning processes are informed by pupil population data, statutory assessment information, projected demand and local geographical considerations. Those processes help to identify gaps in provision and support decisions about where additional specialist capacity may be required.

Mr Allen: I thank the Minister for his answer and for the update on the improvements that have been made. I am sure that, like me, the Minister and other Members are all too often approached by families seeking representation to improve the process further. What assurance can the Minister give to families that he will work to further improve that process so that they and their children do not face the cliff edges that are all too routinely common?

Mr Givan: Mr Allen raises a number of points. He is right about improving the performance. One area that we have sought to improve has been reducing the time frame for the assessment being carried out from 26 weeks to 22 weeks. That is part of the new regulatory framework that the Education Committee has delayed and did not actually vote through. That has led to a one-year delay in a legally binding framework being in place that will reduce the 26 weeks to 22. It is regrettable that the Education Committee took the approach to delay on that issue. We have already invested more than £100 million in preparing for that new framework, yet the Committee has failed to do its job, and not for the first time.

I am also looking to provide additional resources through the enhanced support model for schools. Before you even get to a statement of educational need, we want to create the flexibility in schools to meet the needs of a whole-school population because, by the time you have gone and got an assessment and a legal statement, the system has failed. We should not rely on a legal document, which often is difficult to implement, to provide what our young people need at every stage of their lives. That is what we are trying to do through the new enhanced support model. That would be hugely beneficial.

Mrs Mason: Minister, you mentioned the system failing. Can you give us an indication of how many children are counted as having a placement, but their needs cannot be met there, and they are on a reduced timetable? Do you accept that there is a suspicion out there that those children are effectively being moved off a list, and it is masking the true scale of the placement crisis?

Mr Givan: Getting the right place is hugely important for a lot of children. Parents want that, and I support that. That is why I have communicated repeatedly to schools that it is not just for a small number of schools to respond: young people with special educational needs reside in every community and in every part of the Province, and every school has a responsibility to step up in order to provide support. That is why I am encouraged by the positive response from many schools that have come forward to say that they will offer support. Whether it be through specialist provision or the 150 schools where we are currently assessing the enhanced school model pilot, there is a clear desire to provide the right support. It is vital that it is provided in the right place. That is what we are trying to achieve.

Ms Brownlee: Can the Minister detail the oversight arrangements that are in place to review the EA's decisions to establish specialist provision in mainstream classrooms?

Mr Givan: The EA has a comprehensive oversight arrangement that reviews decisions regarding the establishment of specialist provision in mainstream schools. The EA maintains internal oversight through its senior leadership team. All specialist provision proposals will undergo an eight-week consultation process. The EA will continue to work with all stakeholders when considering proposals, in accordance with the established framework and strategic operational plan.

I can therefore assure the Member that there is oversight of the process. I can also inform her that, when the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) carried out its first phase of assessment of specialist provision in mainstream settings, its report was encouraging about the quality of what was provided, which was good, and about its enriching the environment of the whole school, which is what we want by way of delivering an inclusive school population. The ETI is undertaking the second phase of its assessment process to provide assurances that specialist provision is working and to identify where improvements can be made, because, ultimately, we want to ensure that we do the best that we can.

Ms McLaughlin: Obviously, specialist provision in mainstream schools is really important. You mentioned how many schools will be involved in that. I have heard about the classes that will be involved. Can you tell us the number of places that will be provided?

Mr Givan: In my response to the original question, I mentioned that there were 4,400 placements for children in the transition years. They had secured a place before the start of term. There were obvious issues with trying to get placements for the start of the academic year. That was a much improved picture compared with that of the previous three years. All children have a placement in schools, but, often, in the placement process, as children go through the period of rolling assessment, some children in their placement will identify that they have a need. That is why it sits outwith the normal allocation of places for other children. The EA will say that it is to ensure that pupils get the right place. Every child has a placement in place, and every child will be in that physical school environment over the next number of months. There is a very small number who are currently in contingency arrangements to ensure that they are getting the best possible education.

Mr Givan: The Education Authority is responsible for the operation and delivery of home-to-school transport, including making the necessary arrangements to support the safe transport of children and young people with disabilities and special educational needs.

Transport arrangements for pupils with a statement of SEN are considered on an individual basis to ensure that their specific transport requirements are met. The EA also considers requests for alternative transport arrangements where a pupil's medical condition or mobility needs require additional support.

The EA provides transport assistance through a variety of means, such as its own yellow bus fleet, which includes wheelchair-accessible vehicles, Translink passes and transport procured from private operators. Where transport is provided by a private operator, the EA specifies any requirements for wheelchair access or other specialist provision.

I recognise the importance of ensuring that children and young people can travel to and from school safely and reliably. I will continue to engage with the EA on transport for pupils with disabilities and special educational needs.

Mr Bradley: I thank the Minister for that answer. Given the rural nature of my constituency of East Londonderry and the distance that some children have to travel to reach specialist provision, will the Minister provide an update on the outstanding SEN taxi contracts?

Mr Givan: The Member makes a really important point about the length of time and the distances that young people in his constituency have to travel. That is one of the reasons why we have engaged and sought to have all schools being part of the solution and the provision. It is also why we have mapped out a 10-year plan for significant capital investment in the special school estate. I have a paper before the Executive that is still being blocked by Sinn Féin that would have dedicated funding for specialist provision by way of enhancing the school estate. All of that is creating a problem with transport, and the increased cost of transport is partly as a result of the failure to invest in the school estate, which we are trying to do in a strategic fashion.

The position at the middle of September was that there were 62 contracts progressing through the EA's evaluation process. That was affecting 135 pupils whose taxi transport arrangements had not, at that point, been confirmed. However, the EA has advised that the large majority of those contracts have now been provisionally awarded and are awaiting completion of the required compliance checks. Obviously, financial support — a payment — can be provided to parents in circumstances where there is not a bus, an EA fleet bus or taxi provision. However, that is suboptimal, and, therefore, the EA is continuing to make provision available for those families.

Mr McGrath: The original question referenced wheelchair access. There is a school in my constituency, Lecale Trinity Grammar School, that took the jump to be an amalgamated school, but the accommodation is not 100% perfect. There are a number of disabled pupils, but they are not able to get access to some of the buildings in a timely manner because there are no ramps in place and they have to walk round the whole length of the building to get there. Is it possible for that issue to be prioritised? Those children are not able to get access to those buildings in bad weather, and it is impacting on their education. At the end of the day, a ramp needs to be put in; that is all.

Mr Givan: I am happy to look into the constituency case that Mr McGrath has raised. I visited that school, and I know about the amalgamation that took place. I will raise those issues with the EA and come back to the Member.

Mr Givan: It is vital that effective arrangements are in place to support children and young people with medical needs, including severe allergies, anaphylaxis and special dietary requirements, so that they can participate fully and safely in education. My Department is aware of developments elsewhere in the United Kingdom, including the introduction of Benedict's law and Owen's law and the measures being considered to strengthen support for children with severe allergies. My officials have reviewed the new guidance that was published in England in July in order to identify gaps in existing guidance here in Northern Ireland. Engagement has also taken place with stakeholder groups to understand their views on the appropriate way forward. There has also been detailed discussion with the Department of Health, the Education Authority and counterparts in other parts of the UK on the issue.

It is clear that more could be done to ensure that allergies are managed safely and consistently in all schools across Northern Ireland. Having listened to the evidence, specifically from the families of children who are directly affected, I can confirm that I plan to take action. It is my intention to launch a public consultation before the end of this calendar year that will seek the views of all interested parties on the development of stand-alone allergy guidance for Northern Ireland schools. That will explore what needs to be done to strengthen current allergy management arrangements, as well as consider administrative and legislative options to achieve that. The objective will be to ensure that schools have access to clear guidelines for the best practice in allergy management, ensuring that the well-being of all our children and young people is protected.

Mr Martin: I thank the Minister for his answer. Minister, that is great news. There will be parents watching today who have children, as you rightly cited, with severe allergies and are very passionate about the issue. There are a number of parents in my constituency, particularly mums, who have children with such allergies, and I have met them on a number of occasions.

Would you agree to meet them, Minister, to outline the consultation that you have announced today and hear some of their concerns and what they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis?

Mr Givan: I commend Mr Martin for the way in which he has raised public awareness and campaigned on the issue. I was pleased to meet parents and representatives from the National Allergy Strategy Group at the launch of its allergy strategy in Parliament Buildings in June. We had an opportunity to hear about the experiences of children and young people with allergies in our schools, and I spoke with a number of the parents and young people who attended on that occasion. Officials have also met the Benedict Blythe Foundation and Food Allergy NI to discuss their concerns. I am more than happy to continue with that engagement and meet Mr Martin and the constituents whom he has been representing on the issue.

Mr McNulty: This is not specifically related to the question, but I hope that the Minister will indulge me. The programme for international student assessment (PISA) shows a wide-spread decline in reading, alongside increased screen use, digital distraction and the emergence of AI. What is your Department doing to understand the impact of those changes on pupils' concentration, literacy and learning in the North?

Mr Speaker: I see no relation to the original question. Move on.

Brian Kingston.

Mr Kingston: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Perhaps that supplementary question might apply better to question 4.

Mr Givan: I thank Mr Kingston for the question. [Laughter.]

I welcome the latest programme for international student assessment, commonly known as "PISA", results for Northern Ireland. International studies such as PISA provide essential insights on our system’s strengths and highlight opportunities to learn from approaches that are used in other high-performing countries.

While our pupils continue to perform relatively well internationally, the findings highlight significant challenges, particularly declining attainment in reading and mathematics and persistent gaps linked to disadvantage and gender. Literacy and numeracy are fundamental to educational success, yet the proportion of pupils failing to reach the baseline level 2 standard has increased substantially over the past decade. It is particularly concerning that outcomes for lower-attaining pupils have deteriorated and that Northern Ireland is now outperformed across all three PISA domains by England and the Republic of Ireland. Those results reinforce the need for ambitious reform and targeted support, especially for disadvantaged learners. Through the Department's TransformED programme, we are focusing on improving teaching and learning, as high-quality teaching remains the single most important in-school factor in raising standards.

While Northern Ireland remains a strong-performing education system by international standards, we cannot be complacent. Our priority must be to raise standards for all learners, close attainment gaps and ensure that every young person develops the literacy, numeracy and wider skills needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world.

Mr Kingston: I welcome the Minister's commitment to ensuring the development of those core skills. Minister, how do the PISA results compare with the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) literacy and numeracy assessment results that were published last week?

Mr Givan: Being able to get data is hugely important to inform the education system on how we are performing. We had the PISA, which was a snapshot of a representative sample, but, for the first time in more than 20 years, we also had data for children across Northern Ireland in all of our schools. That was published last week. They were the first literacy and numeracy assessment results, and, while the results of those assessments show that many pupils are performing well, they reveal significant challenges that Members cannot ignore.

The results show that almost three in 10 pupils are not reaching the expected standard in literacy and numeracy by the end of primary school and that, by the end of Key Stage 3, almost one third of pupils are not achieving the expected level in numeracy. PISA also found that nearly one third of our young people do not have basic proficiency in maths and nearly a quarter do not have basic proficiency in reading at the age of 15. That is simply not good enough.

Literacy and numeracy are the foundation on which all learning is built and the gateway to future success in education, employment and life. The literacy and numeracy results that were published last week and the PISA outcomes published earlier this month show why continued reform through TransformED is essential.

Mr Sheehan: The PISA results reinforce what we have known for a long time, which is that there is a very long tail of educational underachievement here. The evidence shows that children and young people who fall behind in school do not catch up unless they get some sort of bespoke support. Forget this stuff about TransformED helping everybody. Will the Minister tell us what bespoke support he is providing for those children who fall behind?

Mr Givan: I agree with Mr Sheehan on this occasion, because he is right. If young people fall behind in the early years, and if there is no intervention, it is very challenging for them to be able to catch up. We therefore need to assess fundamentally what has gone on in those early years. Setting aside the PISA results, CCEA's data has, for the first time in 20 years, raised real concerns.

The Member will know that principals of secondary schools often refer to the need to provide catch-up lessons, because so many primary-school leavers are not proficient in basic maths and literacy. That presents a real difficulty. We therefore need to ask ourselves this question: at a time when there is significant funding for free school meals provision and extended schools, and when tens of millions of pounds are being directed into areas of high disadvantage, why is attainment deteriorating? A serious look at the funding approach is required.

TransformED is about providing a curriculum that is accessible to all. That is why we need to make sure that the curriculum closes the attainment gap, particularly for those from a socially disadvantaged background. That underpins everything that we are doing through TransformED. Mr Sheehan is a social justice campaigner, as am I when it comes to education. If he wants, as I do, people from a working-class background to get the best possible support and for the gap to be closed between them and the more well-off who can afford tutors, he should support all the initiatives that I am taking.

Mr Speaker: Mr Kelly is not in his place.

Mr Givan: On 16 September, I launched a public consultation on the proposals to reform the temporary variation policy. The consultation seeks views on a more flexible approach to school admissions that places greater emphasis on parental preference. The proposals recognise that parents often choose an individual school rather than a sector and seek to ensure that, where a school has the capacity to accommodate additional pupils safely, greater weight can be given to parental preference.

In particular, I am proposing a presumption of approval for temporary variation requests from primary schools and non-selective post-primary schools where sufficient capacity exists and where the school is satisfied that it can safely accommodate the additional pupils. I want the new policy to protect the rights of all children, however. Schools will therefore be able to take in additional children only where doing so does not adversely affect their ability to continue to accommodate children with special educational needs. The consultation also seeks views on providing greater flexibility for children who already hold a school place to transfer to another school where places are available and where that reflects parental preference.

The proposals are intended to make fuller use of available school capacity, to increase the likelihood of children securing a place at their preferred school and to ensure that the admissions system is more responsive to the needs of children and families. All consultation responses will be carefully considered before final decisions are taken.

Mrs Cameron: I thank the Minister for his answer. Does he agree that, when a school has capacity and is willing to admit additional pupils, parents should have the greatest possible opportunity to secure a place for their child in that school?

Mr Givan: Mrs Cameron is absolutely right. It goes to the heart of why I am seeking to make the change that I want to make and why there is now a consultation process under way. The core principle should be parental preference. I have highlighted a number of caveats, albeit in a limited form. For example, there should not be an increase in intake if that will displace provision for children with special educational needs. Where capacity exists, however, and a school is willing and able to accommodate additional pupils safely, greater weight needs to be given to facilitating parental choice.

Ultimately, we ought not to be about sustaining education structures and frameworks, but they ought to comply with parental preference and choice. The frameworks and schools need to meet the needs of parents who express that preference. Notwithstanding the caveats that I outlined, where schools in which places are being sought have capacity, we should give greater weight to parental preference.

Ms Nicholl: Question 8, please.

Mr Givan: I think that it is question 7. Current legislation requires all statutory preschool settings to admit penultimate-age children who apply for a funded preschool education place if they still have places remaining after all target-age applicants have been considered. Research is clear that preschool education is not age- and stage-appropriate provision for penultimate-age children. The draft early learning and childcare strategy that was issued for public consultation included this action:

That issue has been raised with me by stakeholders on many occasions, and I have listened to their concerns. New legislation is required if we are to remove that requirement, and I intend to commence public consultation on the issue before the end of this mandate.

In advance of the final strategy, however, I have already provided support to enable the expansion of targeted early learning programmes, such as Sure Start, Pathway and Toybox, which can provide more age-appropriate support for penultimate-age children. Further actions to continue those expansions are proposed in the draft strategy and were strongly supported in the consultation responses. In addition, the strategy includes an action to provide access to age- and stage-appropriate:

I intend to bring the final early learning and childcare strategy to the Executive in the coming weeks. Progression of all actions will, of course, be subject to the necessary Executive approvals at all stages and the availability of funding.

Ms Nicholl: I apologise. I think that I was thrown by the Minister's identifying himself as a "social justice" advocate. That is good news to hear, because our view is very much that putting two-year-olds in nursery settings is not the right place to spend £5 million of a constrained budget. What will the childcare strategy entail when it comes to providing a fit-for-purpose programme that will allow for child development for two- to three-year-olds?

Mr Givan: The strategy will build on what we have already implemented. I want to do more. We were able to expand Sure Start, for example, by making the temporary areas permanent. We also have been able to allow referrals to Sure Start settings from outside the identified catchment areas. I have been to a number of settings, as, I am sure, has the Member. In those settings, you see that that kind of support is more appropriate for penultimate-age children, who are younger, rather than their going into nursery school settings. The provision of Sure Start is one area that I want to see enhanced, and the strategy references that.

Getting a more tailored and bespoke approach for penultimate-age children and those who are younger is the ambition of the draft early learning and childcare strategy. I make the point that it has not yet been approved by the Executive, and, obviously, funding issues are attached to it. In seeking to remove penultimate-age children from nursery schools, we need to make sure that alternative provision is in place. I do not believe, however, that the current position is right, based on the evidence on what is best for the children involved. I will do the consultation on that, and people will get the opportunity to feed into it, and we can move forward from there.

Mr Brooks: The Minister's recent changes to the use of the socially disadvantaged circumstances (SDC) criterion have been roundly welcomed by my constituents, but some others have sought to misrepresent those changes. Will the Minister outline what he hopes to achieve by those measures?

Mr Givan: Like the Member, I found that the changes were welcomed in my constituency. I am not surprised by that, given the number of parents who were often deeply frustrated that their child was discriminated against. The SDC criterion was established in 1998 to maximise access to funded preschool places for children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. However, that was at a time when only 45% of immediate preschool places were being funded. All preschool places are now catered for by way of provision. The circumstances have significantly changed from what they were 30 years ago.

Welfare reform has also had an impact. As welfare reform has expanded provision, many more young people and families have been able to avail themselves of the criterion, because it has been incorrectly read into by EA. That was not the original basis upon which decisions were taken for the criterion to be applied. This not only corrects that change but ensures equality of access for all children.

Mr Speaker: We move on to topical questions. Cara Hunter is not in her place.

Mr Givan: I thank the Member for that question. CCEA took that decision as an awarding body. It provides the overwhelming majority of qualifications in Northern Ireland, but it reviewed the suite of qualifications that it provides, and German was one that it decided to remove. We operate an open qualifications framework in Northern Ireland. It is open to all schools to access German provision from other awarding bodies. In my constituency, one of the schools that has been impacted has indicated to me that it intends to continue providing German as an A-level qualification and will access an alternative awarding body to do so.

Dr Aiken: Thank you, Minister. It is particularly telling that the previous British ambassador to Berlin, Jill Gallard CMG CVO, started her love of the German language at Ballyclare High School. Many more who have studied the language are particularly concerned by CCEA's short-term view. The Minister will be aware that funding for German language education and educational visits also comes from the German embassy and the Goethe-Institut. What dialogue is taking place between the Minister's Department, the EA, CCEA and German officials, and will the Department return the funding?

Mr Givan: There has been correspondence, and various interested parties have made representations on the issue. We have responded to that. Ultimately, CCEA took this decision about what qualifications to make available. Few pupils take German through CCEA, which means that, when it comes to marking and grading, there is a small pool from which to grade As, Bs, Cs and Ds. That has a detrimental impact on pupils. If they will be competing against a much bigger pool of applicants using a different awarding body, schools will want to change. Those who understand how awarding takes place will know that there is a certain percentage of pupils who get an A, a B, a C, a D and so on. When that system is applied to a very small cohort — in this particular subject, they are often young people who perform very well — there is little margin to appreciate where they can fall within that banding system. Young people who get, for talk's sake, a C grade would get a higher grade from a different awarding body. People should therefore think carefully, once they understand how the awarding system works, about what is actually to the betterment or the detriment of pupils in Northern Ireland when it comes to this issue.

Mr Speaker: Question 3 has been withdrawn.

Mr Givan: The Member will know that I am making myself available to the Committee. The Committee has sought me to come before it, and we will put a date for that in the diary. I will attend the Committee in due course, when we have the date agreed. There will be no breach of the ministerial code in that respect.

I am pleased to see that Sinn Féin now values the ministerial code, the Pledge of Office and its own code of conduct, which it has flagrantly breached. Now, it has the audacity to raise the issue.

Mr Boylan: I thank the Minister for his answer. I asked about the permanent secretary, but I will accept what the Minister said for now. It is good to see that he is buddies with my colleague Pat Sheehan: they are on speaking terms again.

Will the Minister confirm whether the permanent secretary will attend the Education Committee tomorrow to answer questions on the Minister's diversion of funding intended for Iontaobhas na Gaelscolaíochta and the murky circumstances surrounding the proposed £30,000 for a football pitch in Richhill?

Mr Givan: The Member has raised a number of points. He will have access to the correspondence that I sent to the Committee Chair. I made it clear that officials should go to the Committee to answer questions on matters that pertain to their areas of responsibility. I also made it clear that they are not there to be subjected to — this is not my definition but what officials have reported to their line managers — the bullying and harassment that has been taking place, enabled by the Committee, in the way that Mr Sheehan has conducted himself. As I said in the correspondence, I do not expect Mr Sheehan to break the habit of a lifetime, but I expect the Chairman and the Committee to ensure that civil servants are not subjected to inappropriate questioning, bullying or harassment when they come before that Committee. That is not an unreasonable position for me, as Minister, to take, given my duty of care when it comes to all the officials in my Department.

The Member has asked perfectly legitimate questions that officials and I are more than competent to deal with. However, when Members call officials before the Committee and do not ask them even one question about the subject that they were asked to come up for but use the opportunity to pursue their own vendettas, it is incumbent on me to act, which is why I have. I trust that the Committee will put in place the appropriate protocols to allow a resolution to the issue.

Mr Givan: I am aware of the situation and thank Mr Stewart for raising it with me. Ms Brownlee has also raised it directly and personally with me on a number of occasions. In addition, I met some of the teachers from the school, who raised it directly with me.

The Education Authority has engaged with the school. I know that the current arrangements are far from satisfactory. The Education Authority looked at alternative provision that the school suggested to it, but that was deemed not to be the most suitable. I am very much alert to the issues. We continue to engage with the EA, because it needs to put in place the appropriate provision to address the issues.

Mr Stewart: I thank the Minister for his answer, and I commend all those in the community who have been involved. I pay tribute to Mrs Hall and Ms Stewart for their leadership and to the schools that have stepped up.

Minister, you mentioned the EA. Have you had an assurance from the Education Authority that all the support required during the temporary measures will be provided to the staff, parents and pupils to ensure that there is no detriment to education?

Mr Givan: Yes. We have had assurances around the EA supporting the school, but, as I said in my response, it is not a satisfactory arrangement. The cause is the lack of investment in routine maintenance across our school estate. Unfortunately, it is not the only school in which that has happened: another school in Londonderry has had roofing issues, and temporary accommodation has been provided in a neighbouring school setting while it carries out significant restructuring. It is regrettable that the school in East Antrim has found itself in that position. I assure the Member that the EA is doing all that it can to put in place the appropriate provision, but that is suboptimal.

Mr Givan: Yes.

Mr Baker: Minister, I will jog your memory of that night. You were being interviewed in Lisburn in the midst of a protest that you attended and supported at which there was a crowd of masked men. We know what happened that night: businesses were instructed to close and were intimidated into doing so; migrants were subjected to abuse; and families were burnt out of their homes because of the colour of their skin. I ask you this again, Minister: do you believe that your actions that night were consistent with the Pledge of Office?

Mr Givan: Yes.

Mr Givan: It is why we have embarked on the transformation of our education system in terms of academic achievement. I have made it clear that there is disadvantage in our society: there are those who have more opportunity and those who come from a more disadvantaged background. It is too easy for that to be determined as being a result of the 11-plus or the transfer test when it is the result of a vague curriculum that the independent review of education carried out by Lucy Crehan identified as a weakness in our education system.

How do we close the attainment gap? We embark on the process of reform that we are engaged in. I am immensely proud of all the teaching professionals who put their shoulder to the wheel when it came to the various working groups that drafted the curriculum that has been out for consultation; when it comes to pedagogical practice and all the evidence-based reforms that we are carrying out in considering the suite of qualifications and how that should align; and when it comes to teacher professional development and the way in which we engage with the initial teacher training colleges — St Mary's University College and Stranmillis University College, Queen's University and Ulster University. That work has been led by professionals in our education system. They want what I want, which is for every child to achieve their potential. That is what drives me, and I know that it is what drives the Member.

Mr Nesbitt: Does the Minister agree that those same social determinants are the cause of economic inactivity and health inequality and that those three areas could therefore form the kernel of the next Programme for Government?

Mr Givan: I do not disagree with the Member. In terms of the ability to effect real change in society, education is the biggest driver that will help with those outcomes. So many people passionately believe in education because it is often the way in which someone can work their way out of challenging circumstances. Many issues will influence and impact on the outcomes of young people, but a good education is a fundamental human right. That is why we have embarked on the changes to our education system.

Mr Givan: I have met various youth organisations. They had relayed their concerns with the existing way in which that was being operated by the Education Authority. That is why we had a prolonged period of consultation and engagement taken forward by the EA. That has led to changes to the youth framework in that respect that have been received positively by many. From my engagement with a lot of those organisations, I can say that they have seen the benefit of the changes that have been put in place. I am, however, more than happy to continue to engage on that with the youth sector and with young people.

Ms Mulholland: Has any consideration been given to exploring how solutions could be provided that would allow the community and voluntary sector to utilise EA facilities, especially when we are looking at statutory services stepping back, to allow them to deliver youth services?

Mr Givan: The EA has a desire to have greater use of its facilities by communities. Part of the change around youth work and something of which I have been supportive is having a greater role for the community and voluntary sector. There should be statutory involvement only when the community and voluntary sector is unable to meet the need in a community. However, if you can have a community and voluntary organisation — they are often personally invested in improving the outcomes of the young people and their society — the statutory organisations — in this case, the EA — ought to enable and support it. That has been part of the driver for the change in the youth framework.

Mr Givan: The consultation for all of the curriculum has been out, and we are working through the responses. I am more than happy to assure the Member that, where the responses have highlighted issues that we need to address, all of those issues will be seriously looked at before a final curriculum is brought forward.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: That ends Question Time. I ask Members to take their ease for a moment to allow Members to leave the Chamber and others to come in before we go on to the next item of business.

Mr Donnelly: I beg to move

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

Danny, please open the debate on the motion.

Mr Donnelly: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. We are ten years on from the Bengoa report, 'Systems, Not Structures', and it is clear that, since then, we have not progressed the reforms that are needed. In 2016, an article titled, "A fresh, new strategy for the Northern Ireland health and care system?" discussed the new strategy for our health service and concluded:

Reading that now, I wonder what the author would make of where we have arrived. The argument for transformation has stood the test of time, but the functionality of these institutions has not. Of course, the pandemic had enormous impact, but five years of political collapse and paralysis and a disastrously implemented Brexit had a hefty price tag attached, and we are still paying the price. No explanation relieves the Assembly of its responsibility or can become a permanent excuse for failing to move forward.

Having worked in the health service for 20 years, I have experience of seeing the decisions that are made here and experience of their consequences. I see colleagues across the system keep a health service going through goodwill and a deep sense of responsibility to their patients. Each year, they brace themselves for winter pressures. They know that, when someone cannot leave hospital because there is no care package or nursing home placement available, the consequences will be felt in increased corridor care and overcrowded emergency departments. They see the impacts when palliative care is unavailable to patients and their families, and they absorb the cost of medication shortages to continue patient supply.

They will do everything that they can to make those situations bearable, often at considerable cost to themselves.

When they come through another winter or another crisis, they are therefore faced with the expectation that they will find the strength to do it again. We are asking their commitment to compensate year after year for our failure to make the changes that they need to see made. As an MLA, I know that there are colleagues across the Chamber who care deeply about the situation. I have worked with them, and I do not doubt their desire to improve things, but that makes the distance between our intentions and what we deliver all the harder to accept.

People working in the health service have had to watch this place collapse, wait for it to return and then listen to the arguments that paralysed it threaten to consume it again. I have conversations with colleagues in the health service now about how little opportunity there seems to be to recover between shifts. They go into work already worried about whether they will be able to provide the standard of care that their patients need. There is evidence of the consequences of prolonged waits. They cause harm. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has calculated that more than 1,000 excess deaths in each of the past three years were associated with long waits in overcrowded A&E departments. Twenty years ago, such things happened rarely, if ever, but they are commonplace today.

We have an ageing population, with the number of people aged 65 and over projected to increase by almost half in the next 25 years and those aged 85 and over projected to more than double in the same period. We have a lack of adequate social care and underfunded and under-resourced community care that is driving up corridor care and overcrowding in A&E departments, and that is having a huge impact on ambulance response times in our communities. There is an underfunding of community pharmacy, with an outdated clawback mechanism, medication shortages and a continued expectation that pharmacies will absorb costs and keep the service running by effectively subsidising the supply of medicines in Northern Ireland. We have the Department at odds with GPs, who are the main point of access to the health service here. GPs are unable to agree a contract or pursue engagement on the neighbourhood model. GP surgeries see over 200,000 patients every week in Northern Ireland, yet they are funded by only 5·4% of the entire healthcare budget. In other parts of the UK, funding is closer to 10%.

We have had a neurology review with no concrete next steps, while 26,855 patients wait for a first neurology consultant appointment, with a median waiting time of 77 weeks. We have no women's health strategy, despite the many issues that affect women in Northern Ireland having been highlighted in the Chamber. We have a mental health strategy from 2016 that has been underfunded and under-delivered, and it has now effectively been shelved. There are currently no commissioned services for ADHD assessment and treatment of adults in Northern Ireland, and there is a continued refusal of shared care arrangements for those who get a private diagnosis. There has essentially been a collapse of NHS dentistry. The Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016, some 10 years after its passage, remains only partially commenced, with no indicative timetable for full commencement.

We are driving many people in Northern Ireland to spend huge amounts of money in order to access timely healthcare through becoming patients in the private healthcare sector. It is a two-tier health service. We have had three separate Health Ministers in this mandate alone, with a dispute over delay and transformation to thank for the most recent of those changes. The recommendations from the Health Committee's recent inquiry into palliative care are no further forward. There are shortages across many areas of the healthcare workforce, so we need a workforce strategy.

Cancer waiting times in Northern Ireland are currently the worst on record, with around seven in 10 patients — 71% — not starting treatment within the target time of 62 days of being referred to hospital. If that performance continues, around 20,000 people could miss that target over the next five years.

Mr Dickson: I thank my East Antrim colleague for giving way. He will know that I chair the all-party group (APG) on cancer, so my comment to him is made on a cross-party basis. It concerns cancer waiting times. Over the past 10 years, the 62-day target for seeing cancer patients has dropped from 95% to 29·5%. The 31-day treatment target has dropped from 98% to 88%, while the 14-day breast cancer appointment target has dropped from 90% to a shocking 5·5%. Does he agree that cancer services in Northern Ireland are in crisis today?

Mr Donnelly: Yes. Thank you for that. I absolutely agree. I am sure that Members across the House have constituents who have raised such issues with them. Constituents have come to me with concerns about their very long waits.

This year, there is an additional pressure of having to cut 4% from trust budgets — or, rather, "make cash-releasing changes". The trusts will have fewer resources available to absorb pressure this winter. Like many who work in the health service, that is something that I am hugely concerned about. None of what I have mentioned, however, even scratches the surface of the issue. We know that we need transformation; we have been saying it for years, but what does that actually mean?

Transformation is defined as a complete or major change in appearance, form, character or nature of something or someone. It is fair to say that more than just our health service is in need of transformation. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It is easy to stand here and say that we stand up for our health service in a speech, but if we continually expect health service staff to take responsibility for their patients while we repeatedly walk away from our responsibility to them, we are failing in our jobs and in what we are supposed to do, effectively turning our backs on transformation.

For those colleagues who want to revisit the past, I suggest returning to the Bengoa principles of reform — returning to the case for change and asking what each of us is prepared to do in order to deliver it. Professor Bengoa, who is returning to Northern Ireland soon, stated in 2016 that we had to reform our health system because, as he put it, the platform was burning.

The platform has been burning for 10 years, and the need to reform is now urgent. The rhetoric of division does not die once we leave this Chamber, and the consequences of our decisions do not remain within these walls. I call on my colleagues in the Assembly to change the narrative and to work towards the transformation of our health service for people here. I call on the Minister today to outline his plans to make progress on health and social care transformation and to improve patient outcomes before the end of the mandate.

Mr McGrath: I beg to move the following amendment:

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Colin, you have 10 minutes to propose and five minutes to make a winding-up speech. All other contributors will have five minutes.

Mr McGrath: Thank you very much, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I welcome the debate and the proposal in the motion. I hope that our amendment can be seen as a small contribution to the motion, while not changing it massively. Our amendment revolves around the line in the Bengoa report that sums up where we are today better than anything else. The report said that "change is everybody's business".

That report was published 10 years ago, yet patients are still waiting and staff are under unbearable pressure. Communities too often find out about change when the service is right on the brink and about to collapse. The BMA's description is absolutely devastating; it says that we are witnessing "reform by service collapse". It says that difficult decisions have too often:

and that "reform cannot be endlessly discussed."

That is why the SDLP has tabled this amendment, which, we believe, strengthens the motion. The debate cannot simply end with another demand on one Health Minister to fix everything or to change his approach, and for him to demonstrate political leadership. Our amendment commits the Assembly to "working constructively" towards:

and asks the Minister, whoever that Minister will be, to reach out and work with the other parties to build a consensus that is "capable of sustaining difficult decisions" and surviving changes of Minister or electoral cycles.

That is not about letting this Minister or any Minister off the hook. The Health Minister is responsible for his Department and he must make the decisions and show that leadership. Where decisions are delayed or mistakes are made, the Assembly should rightly hold him to account. However, the fiction that one Minister sitting in Castle Buildings can transform our entire health and social care system on their own has to end.

Health does not begin at the hospital door. It begins with somebody having a warm home, a child growing up in poverty or someone being able find secure employment. It is about whether schools equip young people to live healthy lives, whether our communities have decent public transport and whether older people are supported to remain independent.

Never mind Bengoa for a moment — does anybody remember the 'No More Silos' report? Mental health, addiction, poverty, housing, education, employment and isolation do not fit neatly into departmental silos, so neither can the solutions. The Department of Health itself has already acknowledged that. Its reset plan says that:

The plan concludes that resetting health and social care:

That need for collective political responsibility is not simply our view. Professor Gabriel Scally, who has decades of experience in public health, says that public trust has been shattered. If we want people to accept difficult changes to services that they have relied upon for generations, we cannot simply announce those changes and tell communities that the experts know best. We have to bring people with us. We have to demonstrate that the alternative is genuinely better, safer and sustainable. Crucially, we have to stand together politically when the evidence supports change. That is what political leadership on health transformation should look like.

That was achieved in the South when Sláintecare was agreed in 2017. Whatever criticisms can be made of its subsequent implementation, its origins matter. In 2017, politicians from different parties came together around a 10-year vision for health reform. They recognised that reform at that scale had to reach beyond one Minister, one Government and one electoral cycle. That is precisely the political maturity that we need here. If that is the diagnosis, our politics needs to catch up with it. Health must become a collective Executive priority with collective Executive ownership. That means that every party that sits around the Executive table must resist the short temptation to land a few blows and remember that, as they so love to remind us, they are in the Executive.

Let us look at the Health Committee. I am supposed to be the sole Opposition member out of nine members, yet on that Committee it appears that one of the nine is the Minister's rep, who backs him up, and the other eight are in opposition. Yes, a Committee is meant to hold a Minister to account, but all that we ever see —.

Mrs Dodds: Will the Member give way?

Mr McGrath: I do not get extra time, so please make it quick.

Mrs Dodds: Does the Member accept that that is called scrutiny?

Mr McGrath: My goodness, that was short. Thank you. Yes, and that is exactly the point: we are there to hold the Minister to account. If the Committee is being oppositional, however, that points to the core of what we want to achieve with this amendment, which is to encourage everybody to be forward-looking together on transformation. If there was a whole Executive approach when it came to transformation, we could see agreed principles, an agreed direction of travel, and the space to make the necessary changes instead of what we see at the moment, which is simply collapse in the system. We cannot demand transformation in principle and oppose every difficult manifestation of it in practice. We need an agreed direction of travel that can survive the political pressure that inevitably comes when change reaches a particular hospital, service or community. That is what our amendment seeks to achieve.

There is another issue that we cannot ignore. We are entering the final five and a half months of this mandate. Where is the health legislation? In March, I asked the then Health Minister what primary legislation he expected to introduce before the end of the mandate. His response, on the day that he resigned, identified the control of data processing Bill, a safe and effective staffing Bill and the duty of candour Bill as legislation that he hoped to introduce. The answer was there in black and white, yet here we are and the only piece of primary health legislation that has been brought through the Assembly has been about overturning hospital car parking charges. That is baffling. How are we meant to achieve change in our health service when we do not even have legislation that can pass through the House?
There is a danger — it is, I think, very much the reality — that our Executive have become good at describing the crisis but totally ineffective at changing it. They are rather good at amplifying or engineering a crisis but not so good at ending one. We need decisions; we need legislation; and we need delivery, but, for that to happen, we also need political courage. Bengoa told us 10 years ago that the choice was stark: resist change and watch services deteriorate towards collapse or embrace transformation and build a sustainable service.

Change is everybody's business, as I said. The public do not care which Department wins an argument around the Executive table. They just want the Government to work and to work right now. I defy Members to find one person who thinks that this place is operating as it should. It is time for maturity, decency and, dare I say it, even a dose of shared effort in our politics.

Mr McGuigan: I thank the Members who tabled the motion and the amendment. I take exception to Mr McGrath's narrative of the Health Committee. It may dispel some of the public narrative when I say that I agree with my Health Committee colleague Diane Dodds — I am speaking not as Chair of the Health Committee but as my party's health spokesperson — that what we rightly do on the Committee is challenge the Minister in a constructive way. Indeed, in the short time since the Minister took office, he has asked us to challenge him and his decisions, as is our right. All of us on the Health Committee have done a reasonably good job of doing the right thing, which is to take politics out of the Health Committee. Health is far too important for us not to do so. I have said time and again that I do not care what political party the Health Minister comes from. I want the Health Minister to succeed in everything that he does, because health is far too important for the population that we all serve for him not to do so.

As the then Health Minister Michelle O'Neill announced 'Delivering Together' in response to the Bengoa report, she said that "whole system transformation" would be required across primary, hospital and community care, and she warned us of the consequences of not delivering planned and managed change in our health and social care system. Ten years on, we are, unfortunately, living with the consequences of delay and unmanaged change: staff shortages, overcrowded emergency departments, ambulance delays and patients remaining in hospital beds because the number of home care packages is insufficient to support safe and quick discharge.

Every week, I meet GPs, community nurses, allied health professionals, hospital clinicians, social care providers and home care teams, and I hear about the challenging environment in which they are trying to deliver services, be that in unsuitable buildings or with staff shortages and demand outstripping capacity.

Constituents contact me regularly with their personal stories of long waits for assessments, diagnostics and routine procedures that have become urgent; people losing their independence while they wait for services; and families forced to shoulder care because of the limited availability of home care packages. Those prolonged waits increase clinical complexity, lead to deterioration and cause moral injury to staff who know what good care looks like but cannot deliver it in circumstances where the system is either under-resourced or fragmented. That is especially difficult when it comes to red flag cancer care and time-critical appointments.

The focus has to be kept on the priority of getting to grips with our unacceptably long waiting lists. I welcome the Executive's commitment to tackling waiting times and the work that has gone into achieving reductions to date, particularly for those on the longest waiting lists. It has to be acknowledged, however, that we still have a long way to go. There are many challenges to be overcome if what we are doing is to be sustainable in the long term. Investment is needed, but that alone will not solve the problem. When the permanent secretary was before the Committee last week, he talked about the difficulty of changing the engine while driving the car. I agree that we have had decades of underinvestment, but we need to spend money in the right places. I was struck by Danny Donnelly's opening remarks when he detailed the raft of strategies that we have that are not funded and the raft of strategies that we do not have that are needed.

Genuine and impactful healthcare transformation is about much more than our hospitals, where they are located and the services that they provide. It begins with timely access to GPs, and it extends through to community and allied health professionals, robust home care services and sufficient staff to ensure safe and timely discharge from hospital. If there are any weak links in that chain, the whole system strains.

I was struck by the BMA's warning about social care reform by service collapse, and that should concern us all. We see it, time and again, most recently with the midwifery shortages at Daisy Hill Hospital and in discussions about services at the Causeway Hospital and the South West Acute Hospital. Patients deserve to understand the clinical evidence and the alternatives that have been considered and how the service will be protected.

I am rushing through my speech, because I am going to run out of time. We need to take the politics out of it, and I urge the Health Minister to take the politics out of it. His party leader —

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Time is up.

Mr McGuigan: — introduced party politics into it, but we need decisions that are made on the clinical evidence and in the best interests —

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

Mr McGuigan: — of our patients.

Mrs Dodds: As I understand it, Professor Bengoa will be back in Northern Ireland at the Northern Ireland Confederation for Health and Social Care (NICON) conference to set out what needs to be done, and I am sure that he hopes to hear about what has been done. I looked at the Department's website to find out what had happened since the conference two years ago, which, ironically, was called "Accelerating Change". The Department's home page directs viewers to the transformation progress page on the departmental website. It contains three items: two are from 2019, and the most recent is from 2021. Minister, that is a sad indictment of where three Ulster Unionist Health Ministers have led us.

Many Members in the Chamber today have talked about the continuous reports on the state of the health service. Of course, when he was here 10 years ago, Professor Bengoa said that he thought that there was report fatigue and that we had exhausted ourselves analysing the problem but had not done anything about it. We are concerned about that and think that throwing out another committee, or whatever it is, is not going to cut it with the people out there who can see the crumbling services.

In an article for ‘agendaNi’ last November, the Health Minister's predecessor talked about transformation or, as we now call it, "reset". Minister, you are new to the post, but you are the third Ulster Unionist Health Minister. Two years ago this autumn, we had the public consultation "Hospitals — Creating a Network for Better Outcomes", and it was extended to December of that year. We are now two full years later, and we have no information on the consultation responses and an independent expert advisory committee. I am not sure whether Mr Burrows said that that was the way to proceed or not, but we all deserve more and better. You have now decided that the hospital network proposals will not be taken any further. You said that they cause you significant concern, and you have asked the Department not to progress them. That is what has been wrong with the idea of transformation in Northern Ireland. We decide on one thing, and then we decide that we are not taking it forward; we create something else, and nobody knows what is going to happen with that something else.

Mr McGrath: Will the Member give way? She will get an extra minute.

Mrs Dodds: If you are quick.

Mr McGrath: I will be quick. My point is that if the Member were part of the formation of those plans, she would not have to stand here and criticise the Ulster Unionists for not delivering on them. The idea behind our amendment was that if we all decide what the trajectory is, we would not have to stand here and, some might call it, scrutinise or political point-score. We would not have to do that because we all would have signed up to the direction of travel together.

Mrs Dodds: I think that it is more widespread than that. The problem for politicians' conversation around transformation is that people and communities see it as a loss. We have no overall plan. We have not explained to people what exactly that transformation will look like, and we have not built up the services that help that transformation to progress with a good heart.

For example, after the loss of emergency general surgery in the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH), there was no investment in ambulance services, and patients are transferred to a fairly chaotic ED in Altnagelvin Hospital, which is also under immense pressure. Therefore, what we are doing is transferring one problem to another place, and we are not solving the problem.

I have a lot of sympathy with the argument that people in Fermanagh are so far away from services that it is very difficult for them. When I questioned the Western Trust recently, I discovered that, in the southern area of the Western Trust, there are acute imbalances, for example, in the Hospital at Home service. It is all based around Strabane and Londonderry, but very little of it is in the farthest part of the trust area in Fermanagh. That is the problem for rural communities. It is the same in Daisy Hill Hospital and Causeway Hospital. We have not treated the whole. We have always told people that transformation is to be seen as a loss.

I will finish with two things for the Minister. Ladies with Letters were here today. It is three years on, and there are no real answers. There was a refusal from his predecessor to grant that public inquiry. I asked Health officials in July to tell me the youngest person in Northern Ireland who had been treated —

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Diane, time is up.

Mrs Dodds: — with puberty blockers. I have not heard the answer to that, and I asked the Minister a question for priority written answer about a month ago.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

Mrs Dodds: We would like to hear those answers.

Mr Chambers: First, I commend the Minister of Health for his confirmation today that Northern Ireland is leading the way as the first area in the whole of the United Kingdom to provide a 24/7 thrombectomy service for our entire population. Today's announcement, coming so soon after last week's confirmation that we are now, at long last, making progress in reducing the bowel cancer screening age, shows what can happen with a Minister who is resolutely focused on delivery.

Delivery is exactly what our health service needs right now. Everyone in the Chamber knows the pressure that it is under. Patients are waiting far too long, and staff are carrying a heavy burden. The question is whether the Alliance Party motion helps in any way at all to change that.

In reality, such motions, in the current political environment, are the last thing that our health service needs or that the staff want to hear. Regrettably, the proposers of the motion have taken a serious issue and turned it into a party political charge sheet. They condemn the Minister, invoke the BMA's starkest warning and, noticeably, offer no practical route to safer services, shorter waits or sustainable reform. That is not leadership; it is blame poorly dressed up as scrutiny.

Neither the Health Minister nor his predecessor have ever sought to claim that the problems have been solved. They both openly acknowledge that reform has been incomplete, and services remain under severe pressure, but the Alliance Party should explain how a blanket accusation against successive Ministers helps the present one to deliver the changes that patients need.

As I set out in my initial comments, their record is not one of inaction. We have a Health Minister taking decisions that are directly benefiting patients and their families, building on the foundations that the previous Minister, Mike Nesbitt, laid. Since the restoration of the Executive two and a half years ago, the record of delivery on reducing so many of our longest waiting times is clear to see, although I rarely hear the Alliance Party acknowledge that or pay credit to the staff and services, including the many examples of health service transformation in elective care, responsible for the reduction. Elective hubs, rapid diagnosis centres (RDCs) and mega-clinics are adding capacity. Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) and the neighbourhood model are bringing support closer to home.

The Minister is driving that work while facing massive budget and workforce constraints. The honest test is whether those efforts keep improving access and outcomes, not whether a motion can make the bleakest possible political case. Ten years of health reform cannot fairly be reduced to a convenient line about ministerial failure. The system has endured the pandemic, rising demands, sustained financial pressure and prolonged periods without devolved government. Having phrases such as "reform by service collapse" in the motion is not putting forward a plan. What does Alliance propose for the workforce, for funding and for service capacity? What changes would it make, and how would it ensure that they were safe, evidence-based and shaped through staff and community involvement? The motion answers none of those questions. It demands political leadership, whilst, at the same time, it badly misreads the mood of the wider public by making sweeping political attacks.

Minister Robbie Butler cannot have been any clearer when he said that listening to patients and communities and weighing up patient safety and workforce sustainability is part of what goes into making difficult decisions responsibly. Do the signatories to the motion really agree? People want their representatives to be focused on delivery, not for them to use the health service as a stage for party manoeuvring. They want honest scrutiny, not political stunts such as today's motion.

Mr Gildernew: I am delighted to speak in the debate, because, if we are serious about making difficult and lasting changes, we absolutely need a shared programme of reform that can survive beyond an individual Minister or electoral cycle. As a former Chair of the Health Committee, I had the privilege of meeting Professor Bengoa several times. Two of the really important things that Bengoa said, which are neglected at times, were about setting out a vision and about the whole issue of double running. Budgets for double running is a real issue, but there is a huge need to set out a vision.

It is also important that I call out those who revert to the allegation of parish-pump politics the minute that communities raise very valid concerns. It is an insult. Many who engage in that slur, and it is a slur, do so from a position of living beside multiple hospitals and the motorways to get them there. It is an insult that is designed to portray our rural communities as insular, naive and unwilling to move with the times. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The south Tyrone area, for example, far from being parish-pump, is the beating heart of our engineering and manufacturing sector, generating significant revenue for the economy and employing skilled workers who contribute taxes on the same basis as everyone else. We are therefore entitled to safe and effective healthcare on the same basis as everyone else. Are we prepared to travel? Absolutely. Are we prepared to look at positive change? Absolutely. There needs to be engagement with us, however, so that that can be the case. It is also important to state that we cannot simply lift non-relevant models, such as the so-called London and Manchester models, because they do not recognise the unique rural demographics that need to be served here.

As we move forward, we need to be clear about what transformation looks like for people in their everyday lives. For women, it means finally delivering the long-promised improvements in women's health. For people who live in rural communities, transformation has to mean proper access to key services. It means provision of timely and accessible mental health services right across the North, properly resourced and supported social care services, and effective and available primary care services from our GP network.

I represent Fermanagh and South Tyrone. I know that moving a service on a map can look very different when someone is being asked to consider a change that will involve their travelling significant distances for treatment when public transport is limited and ambulance cover insufficient. It can look very different when an older person depends on family members even to get to an appointment. Reform, therefore, must be designed with our rural communities, not simply imposed on them.

If we are serious about reform, we will also have to look genuinely at how we do that on an all-island basis. Our hospital in Enniskillen — the South West Acute Hospital — currently cannot serve any of its natural hinterland to its south, nor, indeed, an awful lot of the hinterland to its east and west, due to the unique geography of its location. That has to change. We have to look at how we do things better on an all-island basis.

There will inevitably be difficult decisions ahead. I believe that they will only command public confidence if people can see the evidence behind them, and therefore the Minister has to set out that vision. What are the changes? What are the improvements? There must be evidence, and we must engage with communities. If communities are genuinely involved and there is a clear alternative in place before existing services are removed, I believe that transformation can then become something other than a word that is associated with withdrawal or collapse and can genuinely become about improvement and opportunity. That is where we need to move to. It has to mean genuine improvement in how we deliver healthcare for all our people, and that is the job for all of us to engage in.

Mr Robinson: At the outset, it is important to state that there was a game-changer announcement yesterday from the Health Minister. We need to applaud him and the previous Health Minister for that. Collectively, as a Committee, we have worked very well. All of us can put our differences aside, despite what has been a very difficult week, to applaud that very positive announcement.

Ten years ago, Bengoa said that the health service could not continue as it was. His message was that the health service here needed to move away from being too heavily dependent on hospital-based care and move towards prevention and early intervention. However, on 30 June 2026, 504,537 patients were waiting for a first consultant-led outpatient appointment at hospitals in Northern Ireland. We are told that that is 6,143 fewer than on 31 March 2026. A total of 81,223 were waiting for inpatient or day-case admission to hospitals on 30 June 2026. Again, we are told that that is 1,345 fewer than on 31 March. Furthermore, 231,145 patients were waiting for a diagnostic test on 30 June 2026, but that is 11,228 more than on 31 March 2026.

We hear every day that the health service here is under huge pressure. There are workforce shortages, pay issues and poor staff morale. GP services are struggling to cope. Cancer waiting times remain far too long, and too many patients, as referred to, are waiting far too long for diagnosis and treatment. There are also serious concerns in the Belfast Trust, as well as the ongoing and unacceptable delays in delivering the new maternity hospital. In palliative care, there is too much dependence on charitable fundraising to provide essential services. The recommendations arising from the Muckamore report must also be acted upon in full. There is also the reform of social care, without which we will continue to see patients who are medically fit to leave hospital remaining in beds without the right care and support because it is not available in the community. As we all know, that places further pressure on an already stretched health service. We could go on and on. It paints a pretty depressing picture. However, we all recognise that being funded in line with need could potentially help us stay afloat for a bit longer.

Transformation was not supposed to mean simply taking vital services away from local people, and the people whom I represent have a particular concern when they look at what is happening across Northern Ireland, particularly at Causeway Hospital. I represent a constituency in which people, staff and former staff value that hospital. People in Coleraine, Limavady, Ballymoney, Ballycastle and the wider Causeway Coast and Glens area expect the Causeway Hospital to be the place where they can access emergency treatment. When someone is seriously ill, time and distance matter, as does the geography of Northern Ireland.

I make no apology for saying that I support the retention of emergency general surgery at Causeway Hospital. People do not believe that the answer to every pressure facing our health service should automatically be to remove emergency services from a coastal district hospital and concentrate them elsewhere — in this case, 20 miles from major hospitals in Belfast.

Transformation should also be about strengthening local hospitals, how the health service recruits and retains the staff that it needs, and how to make those services sustainable. Those whom I represent do not want to see managed decline or the gradual erosion of services until the Health Department eventually says that the service is no longer viable, like what I saw happen at Roe Valley Hospital in Limavady in 1997. My constituency lost one hospital. We have long memories. We do not wish to see the eventual loss of another.

Mr Bradley: I recognise the frustration behind the motion. Patients are waiting, staff are under pressure and people across Northern Ireland know that our health service needs reform. However, I cannot support a motion that speaks about transformation without confronting the central questions. Where is the money? Where is the workforce? Where is the practical plan to deliver it? The Bengoa report was published in 2016. Its principles may still matter, but it is approaching 10 years and cannot be treated as a current, costed blueprint for today's pressure or workforce. We need an updated plan with clear costs, timescales and accountability. Reform cannot be delivered by repeating "transformation" while the funding remains uncertain.

People in the Causeway area that I represent have heard promises for years. Services have been drip-fed away from Causeway Hospital, while the promised elective and diagnostic role still lacks a publicly funded, protected budget, theatre sessions, staffing numbers, and recruitment plans and delivery dates. Now emergency general surgery is proposed for removal. Where is the site-specific costing? What surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, theatres and beds are funded at Antrim compared with Causeway, and how will the trust recruit staff? Those commitments have not been set out. I fear that concentrating surgery at Antrim and elective surgery at Causeway without resources risks moving the pressure and failing patients at both hospitals. The safe course is to retain emergency general surgery at Causeway while the Minister requests a transparent, properly funded assessment of every option. Causeway serves the rural and coastal communities. Access and travel time must count in that assessment. From Cushendall to Ballycastle, from Ballycastle to Limavady and everywhere in between is the catchment area of Causeway Hospital. I add to that that removing emergency services from Causeway will heap pressure on Altnagelvin, which is already under pressure, because that, not Antrim, becomes our nearest hospital.

Reform must also reach the trusts themselves. Management structures and overheads must face the same scrutiny as front-line services, particularly after former Health Minister, Mike Nesbitt, called for reductions across all five trusts. The new Minister is right to gather the facts. The nearest hospital is Altnagelvin. That is under pressure. There is no ambulance cover. That has never been factored into the proposal to remove emergency general surgery from Causeway. However, there is a correlation right across Northern Ireland, where waiting lists are increasing while hospital services are decreasing. I urge the Minister to commission an independent examination of how every trust manages its funds, what is spent on management, what reaches front-line care and whether resources are used effectively. I want reform that patients can see and staff can deliver, but without honest scrutiny of staff management, and without firm financial and workforce commitments, the motion offers political words where people need a workable plan. For those reasons, I cannot support it.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I call on the Minister of Health to respond to the debate. Minister, you have 15 minutes.

Mr Butler (The Minister of Health): Thank you so much, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I am going to read something in that I have not got printed out. There are two images in this Building that have inspired me every time I that I have come in since I became an MLA in 2016, and they are the measure by which I do my politics. One image is of C S Lewis, under which it says:

The other, which faces it, is of Seamus Heaney. It says:

I suspect that, when Rafael Bengoa was here in 2016, having been being commissioned by the then Health Minister, Michelle O'Neill, that was the kind of image and vision that he was setting for us. Let me be absolutely clear: that is, fundamentally, front and centre of what I would like to deliver. Even in the short time that I have as Health Minister, it very much is the premise of the vision and principles on which I will make decisions.

As the Chair intimated, I have said openly that scrutiny and holding my feet to the fire will ensure that I give of my absolute best, and I reiterate that. I will not be a Minister who hides or ducks. Do I enjoy confrontation? I absolutely do not. However, I know that fair challenge brings out the best in all of us. The term that I use is "iron sharpens iron". I hope that, in the months that we have left here, we can engage with a level of integrity on health in particular, because it stretches across every community in Northern Ireland and impacts on every one of our families. I have a rather large family — some live rurally, and others live in urban scenarios — and they deserve to have equitable access to the health service, which is a point that was picked out in some of the contributions. I welcome scrutiny from wherever but principally from the general public. That is why the health service exists. The roles exist in the health service as a provision for the public, and we must never, ever lose sight of that. Patients are living with the consequences of a system that is under severe pressure, and they deserve straight answers.

To be fair, the mover of the motion did not repeat the words in the motion, and I appreciate that. I can accept the debate and the words that have been said today in the Chamber. Unfortunately, however, I cannot support the motion as written, because there are two things in it that I fundamentally disagree with. The first is this:

That is inaccurate. It is wrong, and it has no substance because it does not stack up.

Secondly, the motion:

No. The Minister of Health will not change his approach, because I believe that my approach is the right approach. As has been said in the Assembly, people come at transformation from very different directions and very different sectors. If you live rurally —.

Mrs Dodds: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Butler: No, I will not. I want to get through this, Diane, if you do not mind.

People who live rurally experience health in a very different way, but I want to give a voice to the public so that they are part of the conversation about the transformation of health, because the transformation of health has to happen — it has to happen — but it needs to have the confidence of the public whom we serve.

Let me be clear. Has reform moved quickly enough? Absolutely not. Is the health service in an acceptable position? Absolutely not. However, is it true that nothing has changed? Absolutely not. 'Delivering Together' set a 10-year direction in 2016. The Department's progress reports demonstrate in black and white the various areas in which progress has been made, but, importantly, those reports also recognise that much more remains to be done. Only six weeks into this role, it is patently clear to me that reform has been uneven and that it is absolutely incomplete.

As has been referenced, the pandemic put enormous pressures on a service —

Mr Donnelly: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Butler: Not at this point.

— that was already stretched, as did the long periods when the devolved Government were not functioning. For five years out of 10, there was no leadership at the helm of Health driving that much-needed transformation. Those two facts on their own should explain to everyone in the House why progress has slowed. Coupled with that is the fact that we have an underfunded wider Executive. Why do I refer to the "wider Executive" and not just my portfolio? We know that health outcomes are determined by socio-economic performance. If you live in an area where there is poverty or are from a certain demographic, you will, unfortunately, suffer poorer health outcomes. We therefore need to tackle poverty and educational underachievement. We also need better houses and better transport systems, because all of that will help us to deliver a healthier public through a better public service and health system.

There are, however, changes that we can see. Multidisciplinary teams provided more than 354,000 additional consultations last year alone. Around 1·3 million people can now get physiotherapy, social work or mental health support through their GP practice. The latest figures show that almost 85% of patients supported by those teams were managed in primary care without needing an onward referral. That matters because reform is not just about having a new plan or structure or closing down a building. It should mean that people get help earlier and closer to home and that they do not have to go to hospital when the right care can be provided safely in their home. That change will take time. Behind every waiting list figure is a person who is waiting for an answer, a diagnosis or treatment, so we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are talking about people.

The neighbourhood model is built around that idea. It brings general practice, community pharmacy, the trusts and voluntary and community organisations together around local needs. The Department is bringing together 17 integrated neighbourhood teams, with £4·3 million to support that work. The plan envisages moving around 2% of hospital expenditure over each of the next three years into services that are delivered in neighbourhoods. That "further shore" is now in sight, guys, and that is why this place is important. It can deliver when we are here, doing the work. Initially, the teams will focus on better coordinated support for vulnerable older people to help them stay well and live independently at home for longer. That work builds on services that are already in place.

We have secured almost £60 million for Together for Families and £42 million for e-pharmacy, which will help to modernise primary care. Those investments need to make a practical difference to families and patients, and that is a test. If you do not know that much about the Together for Families programme, have a look at it. It is really transformational. It will help us to get upstream, prevent young people from becoming looked-after children and keep families together. That will be transformational not just for budgets but for the lives that people live.

"Sensible care" is also part of that same effort. It is about making sure that people receive the care that they need, reducing unnecessary differences in practice and improving pathways so that staff time and public money are used well. It is not about cutting care for its own sake; it is about improving outcomes and the patient experience while making services more sustainable.

The reset plan also sets out a shift towards prevention, greater use of digital tools and the provision of more care in the community when such care is safe and effective. To go back to some of the points that were raised, it is an immutable fact that, very often, a hospital is not the best place for recovery, but, unfortunately, it is sometimes the only place for recovery. We need to shift that model, and that will take some time. We need to bring the public along with us to give them the confidence and understanding. It will involve more than moving activity out of hospital, because community teams need the staff and capacity to take on that work, and hospitals must retain the specialist teams and services that people depend on. Those changes have to be planned together. Getting systems to work in tandem is one of the most significant challenges.

As Members will know, Encompass is now in place across Northern Ireland. It gives us a single digital care record. That is an important foundation for more joined-up care. Work on virtual wards and remote monitoring could also help people to receive appropriate care at home or in their local community. We should use technology where it makes care safer and easier to access and be clear about the difference that it will make.

None of that will work without the people who provide care, because staff are the health service's greatest asset. Sadly, however, staff shortages, the impact of delays in approving pay awards on morale, and growing demand make it increasingly difficult to sustain services. General practice is a clear example. It was referenced by one of the bodies that represents general practice. The Department has established a system workforce management group to improve workforce planning and to look at recruitment, retention and the skills that we need in the future. I know that GP teams are under immense pressure. Supporting the long-term future of general practice must be part of the reform agenda. It is very much part of mine. Staff need to be involved in designing new ways of working and supported to deliver them.

We also have to face the position on waiting times. The latest figures since March this year again show that fewer people are waiting for inpatient or day case admission and for a first outpatient appointment, but the overall waits are far too long, and every reduction matters to someone who has been waiting.

On Mr Dickson's point, I, too, have served on the APG on cancer. Thank you, Stewart, for your service and for the unadulterated six weeks during which you have held my feet to the fire as regards that matter, because we absolutely need to do better on cancer waiting times. I am actively involved in work on that at the moment.

Elective centres, endoscopy services and mega-clinics are helping to increase planned care capacity. Almost 22,000 patients have been treated at the Lagan Valley day procedure centre. The overnight day centres at Daisy Hill, South West Acute Hospital and the Mater Hospital have treated around 29,000 patients between them. For this year, £165 million in recurrent funding has been allocated to increase red-flag, time-critical and routine elective capacity. We need to make sure that investment results in more people being assessed and treated.

The motion mentions the BMA's warning about "reform by service collapse". It is serious, and I take it seriously.

However, repeating that phrase does not tell us what to do when a service cannot recruit the staff needed to provide safe care.

Leaving an unstable arrangement as it is can also put patients at risk. Any proposal for change must be judged on the evidence: patient safety, workforce sustainability and the impact on the communities who rely on that service. As Members will be aware, no final decision has been taken on the Causeway Hospital emergency general surgery proposal; indeed, as of today, no recommendation has come to me, as was the case at last week's Health Committee meeting. At Daisy Hill Hospital, the trust's stated intention remains to maintain inpatient maternity services while it continues recruitment and explores every option available to it. I understand how strongly people feel about those services, because, as I said, the health and social care system exists for people, not the other way round. However, we have to have not just equitable access but safe access to the best services.

'Delivering Together' made it clear that reform cannot be done to communities. That is where reform gets difficult. It must be done with communities. The decisions must be based on the best evidence and made with the confidence of our communities. That is why I have established the independent reconfiguration committee to provide expert advice on major or controversial proposals. I will listen to its advice and to clinicians, staff, patients and local communities. The committee was one of the outcomes of the previous hospital network consultation. That has not been forgotten about. It has not been binned; it is being acted on.

The motion states that I need to change my approach. My approach is to strengthen care in communities; to increase elective capacity; and to make decisions on service proposals when the evidence is clear — in fact, to make them when I have the evidence and not when I do not have it. I will not make those decisions by slogan, and I will not avoid them because they are difficult. For the remainder of the mandate, I will accept responsibility for what happens next. I will be honest about what works and what does not, and I will focus the Department on delivery. The public do not need another argument about who is to blame. Equally, they do not need more politically motivated debates in the Chamber; we have had too many. They need safe services, shorter waits and care that they can rely on. I will be judged on whether we make progress towards that, and rightly so.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I call Matthew O'Toole to make a winding-up speech on the amendment. Matthew, you have five minutes.

Mr O'Toole: Thanks, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank all Members who participated in the debate. Since we became an Opposition nearly three years ago, we have been clear and consistent, boringly so, about the need for us to be a constructive Opposition, and we meant that. That is why our amendment does not go in for calling out this Minister. We have no fear about calling out, challenging and scrutinising individual Ministers, but our amendment is about acknowledging that we face not only a vast crisis in our health service but a structural failure of our politics collectively — all of us: Opposition, Executive parties, left, right, unionist and nationalist — in talking about our health service. Our health service is delivering some of the worst outcomes in these islands. Our waiting times are shocking. The red-flag statistics are shocking. They are all shocking. I will not list them, because I do not want to use up my brief time to talk about how bad they are.

It is clear that Health is the biggest area of Executive spending and is getting bigger. It accounts for more than half our entire Budget. It is bigger than the whole Budgets of certain UK Departments. That means that it will take more than one Minister from, with all due respect to the Minister, a small party to achieve the big structural change that is needed in our health system. It is a decade on from the Bengoa report. I will not go through everything that Bengoa said, but, as my colleague Colin McGrath said clearly, this needs to be about fundamental system change. In order to achieve fundamental system change, those who have political influence and political leadership, from the Minister down, including all of us, need to be willing to talk honestly about how we need to change the service. That is why our amendment talks about a new political consensus. We are the Opposition, and we have no fear of challenging people and being direct when it matters, but we are also clear that we need to develop some kind of consensus, because the way that our politics talks about health at the minute is not working. It fundamentally does not work.

Service transformation is being done via collapse. That is what people fear. It is what the BMA says, and it is what, in a sense, local communities are saying.

People are not hearing an explanation of how a restructured or collapsed service will lead to better outcomes for them, their communities and their families, so they do not accept it. In some places, they are right not to accept it. As Colm Gildernew said, people in the South West Acute Hospital's catchment area deserve to know why that state-of-the-art facility is not taking patients from Sligo or Cavan. People in Daisy Hill Hospital, which, again, is close to the border, have a right to know why certain acute services that it would be perfectly reasonable to see delivered there are not being delivered there. We have a responsibility to ensure that we use the all-island context where necessary and also that we make difficult decisions where necessary. Where there are difficult decisions to be taken, we need, as Colin said, to explain to people why they are necessary. I will do a bit of that today.

I start by thanking the Minister for making a decision on 24-hour thrombectomy care. We often have reason to be challenging, sceptical, negative and harsh in the Chamber. That is a good thing. We had an Opposition day motion on delivering 24/7 thrombectomy care not so long ago. I would like to think that that is evidence of our influence, but I do not think that it is that alone.

I am done with not being honest with people about how we need to change our health service. Eighteen years ago, my father, who was in his early 50s at the time, was sitting in his local pub in Downpatrick and had a massive stroke. He was sitting next to somebody who worked in the health service, who spotted the signs immediately. He was taken to hospital within minutes. It happened in the summertime, so there were not any winter pressures on ambulance services, plus it was almost 20 years ago. He arrived at the old Victorian Downe Hospital, which people understandably wanted to be kept open, but my dad did not get the care that he needed and almost died. I was living in London and got a phone call on a Thursday evening. I flew back on the Sunday, and he was near death, because he really had not received the kind of specialist stroke care that he needed. That Sunday, we had to fight, as people do, to get him to a specialist stroke unit at the Ulster Hospital. I travelled with him in an ambulance up to the Ulster. When we arrived, the consultant told me and our family that, in all probability, he was going to die that night. He received the last rites, so we had to phone his family. He did not die — he managed to live, and he has since met six grandkids — but if he had stayed in the local hospital, he would be dead now. Local is therefore not always best, and, as political leaders, we need to be willing to say that to people sometimes. In some instances, people will rightly fight — in many instances, we will fight with them — for local services, but I had to travel up a rural road in an ambulance with my da when he was in his early 50s, and he received the last rites. If he had not made that journey, he would be dead now.

We owe it to our people to be honest with them at times. I am not talking about every instance in which Members have talked about hospitals in their area. People deserve to fight for services in local hospitals, but, when there is clear evidence that services need to be transformed in order to deliver better for our people, we are letting them down if we are not honest with them. I have spoken about my own family's experience. If my dad had not received specialist care, he would not be with us. If we want to make change, we have to take people with us, which is why I have shared my experience today. I do not think that we all have to share personal family or medical histories, but we need to be honest with the communities that we serve. We know that, for so long, our politics has engaged in either sound bites or toxicity while services are getting worse. The public want some leadership, particularly when it comes to the health service. That is what our amendment is about today. We commend it to the Assembly.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I call Nuala McAllister to conclude and make a winding-up speech on the debate on the motion. Nuala, you have 10 minutes.

Miss McAllister: Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Before I begin, I put on record that I also welcome the announcement of the 24/7 thrombectomy service. It represents a significant milestone for us in Northern Ireland. We hope that those who can benefit from it will do so in the time ahead. Minister, it is so very welcome.

Ten years on from the Bengoa report, we are still talking about health transformation, because it is important and affects people's everyday lives. Unfortunately, we stand in the Chamber week in, week out discussing the slow and steady collapse of our health service. Everyone inside and outside the Chamber knows that, despite the amazing efforts of staff, the health service is not in a good place right now.

We know that people wait for years for treatment, diagnosis or even a first appointment. Whether that is for a cancer diagnosis or access to drugs for a degenerative disease, it is difficult for people and affects their everyday lives. People tell us, on the doors, by email and in our constituency offices, that that is what they want us to talk about in the Chamber. They say, "We want you to talk about health and the things that affect us every day". That is why we are talking about it; we need to look at the real-life consequences.

Forgive me, I will not touch on everyone's contributions. Minister, in your response, you said that the reference in the motion to your failures and the failures of your predecessors harming people does not stack up. I will bring a bit of reality. The Department of Health and the trusts have been working on waiting-list validation. That is, I might say, a long-overdue exercise, and it has actually provided some insights through documentation that has been provided to the Health Committee. Specifically, the Belfast Trust confirmed that, in the period between April 2025 and January 2026, 2,116 patients were removed from a waiting list because they had died. During that same period, 1,301 patients were removed from waiting lists in the South Eastern Trust after they passed away. That is not to say that they all died because they were waiting; we cannot say exactly why or how they passed away, but I do not doubt that many people on that list died because they were waiting, and that is just a small snapshot. That situation cannot go on.

I will move on to some of the themes that were raised in the debate. I agree with the proposer on the cost of COVID and Assembly collapse. I also agree with the Minister that we cannot have the merry-go-round of constant collapse. That is why we need to reform the institutions. We cannot use COVID as an excuse for delays, however, because some of the things that are bad now were bad before COVID. Therefore, although I appreciate that it led to delays, we cannot constantly go on about COVID.

We will support the amendment, but I agree and disagree with different parts of the proposer of the amendment's contribution. I recognise that the whole Executive must take on the challenge of health, particularly in tackling health inequalities and the socio-economic reasons why some people suffer more than others and taking preventative measures to do so. As one of the key architects of power-sharing, however, the SDLP will recognise that one party holds the Health Ministry and that, realistically speaking, the Health Minister must make decisions.

There have been lots of discussions on tackling waiting lists. I will say this, Minister: the elective hubs are excellent. Unfortunately, clinicians and those working in the hubs have come to the trusts and the Department to say, "This is how we can do better. If you do this, the elective hubs can be even better". Why are the very people who are carrying out the work not being listened to?

There was discussion of the reconfiguration framework, which is two years old. The response that we hear on that in the Health Committee is, "That's just one piece of it; it doesn't mean everything". That is the exact problem: we are not transforming the service holistically but taking tiny steps and looking at it in silos. We need to transform the health service in its entirety in a way that can bring everyone together, because, let us face it, it is easy for me because I am a Belfast MLA who has access to so many hospitals. I must be willing to travel, however. If we expect people from rural communities to travel, then those in Belfast communities must also travel.

There was a discussion about parish-pump politics. That is an argument that we often come up against, but we have not stood on picket lines with every party in the Chamber when it comes to changes to services. When it comes to changes that are needed, we believe in following the evidence. However, I say to Colm Gildernew that one of his Ministers — the Minister for Infrastructure — must work with the Minister of Health on community transport, road infrastructure and public transport. The Minister for Infrastructure has responsibility for those things too.

Alan Chambers, fair play to you for coming in and delivering that speech. You have a brass neck on you, given that the UUP stood on picket lines, particularly when it came to changes to the minor injuries units. Your Minister endorsed those changes, Mr Chambers, and then you stood on the picket lines. To be honest, Minister, I would be embarrassed for you if that happened again.

We do have ideas, actually. We have many ideas, and not just the ideas contained in the Bengoa report.

A Member: We have not heard them.

Miss McAllister: We have proposed workforce planning. For years, workforce planning has not been going on in the Department of Health despite the fact that, before Danny and I sat on the Health Committee, Paula Bradshaw had been advocating for it. Our ideas also include enhanced theatre protection. How many times have we asked for theatre protection in the Belfast Trust for specialties that can happen only in the Belfast Trust? We need to ensure that the children's hospital has a unique ability to commission services, because it is a regional hospital, not just a Belfast hospital. We must ensure that we can remove waste in trusts, which is something that the Department is not getting a grapple on. Everyone in the Health Committee will agree that there is massive waste when it comes to trust spending, not just on resources but on capital as well. We had the pretend argument from the Department of Health and the trusts that they were going to enhance GP times in nursing homes, but they just copied what GPs were already doing. As for preventative health and the neighbourhood model, we all agree with that. The neighbourhood model should work. I hope that it goes well — it must go well — but how do you expect to deliver a neighbourhood model when the GPs are not even on board? You need to ensure that primary care gets the investment that it needs and that there are proper negotiations with GPs to get them on board.

I will agree to disagree with Maurice Bradley about Bengoa being out of date and there not being any money for it. I agree that money will be needed to invest in transformation but, in all honesty, it will cost us more if we do not invest in it.

Minister, you do not have very much time left. Perhaps, you will take up the portfolio again after the election. I want to work with the Minister to ensure that the best decisions follow the best evidence. That is really important. Together for Families and the changes to stroke services and elective care are examples of excellent changes that are being made in the health service, but we also have to be honest with ourselves. It was very brave of the leader of the Opposition to say that local does not always mean best. We have to have an honest conversation. What if best evidence and community agreement will always be at odds? Does that mean that we will never get change? We have to be honest about where we go from here.

Mr Butler: Will the Member take a short intervention?

Miss McAllister: Yes.

Mr Butler: I will try to be helpful with this. Sometimes we look at the issues as if they do not cross over. We want the best health service, but it cannot be driven by service collapse. You referenced workforce planning, which is something that I am passionate about and have a little bit of a background in. Do you accept that the goal for all of us is the best health system? Where we identify that service collapse may happen, we should put all of our efforts into ensuring that it does not collapse. Change should not become a plan by default and simply happen because we could not find the right person to do a certain job in a certain space. It is complex.

Miss McAllister: I agree that we cannot have transformation by service collapse. It is wrong. What is happening at the minute with Daisy Hill is regrettable. I know that there are UK and European issues with regard to that service, but they need to look at separating obstetrics and gynaecology because doing so could solve some of the issues there. However, parties in the Chamber are not protesting against just service collapse: we constantly see protests from parties against transformation. If we are to put people first and ensure the true transformation of our heath service — not just a sticking plaster or a foot on the brake that means that, as soon as you take your foot off, waiting lists get worse again — then we need to be serious about where we go from here. We cannot take the politics out of health. That is not realistic. Instead, we need to put everyone first and ensure that we have a health service that can deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland, no matter where you live or how far you have to travel. That way, you will be supported, whether you are rural or urban. We need to put the needs of everyone first.

Some Members: Aye.

Some Members: No.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I think that the Ayes have it.

Some Members: No.

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: The Minister says no. [Laughter.]

Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: I ask Members to take their ease while a change is made at the top Table.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): I advise Members that the Speaker has been notified that Jon Burrows will not speak to his Adjournment topic on the modernisation of the A26 Frosses Road this evening. He will seek to have it rescheduled to a later date, which will be a matter for the Business Committee.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): The Speaker has received notice from the Minister for Infrastructure that she wishes to make a statement. I remind Members that they must be concise in asking their questions. This is not an opportunity for debate, and long introductions will not be allowed.

Ms Kimmins (The Minister for Infrastructure): I wish to update Members on the recent Court of Appeal judgement on the A5 western transport corridor. It will come as no surprise to Members that I am absolutely delighted with the court's judgement, which represents a significant milestone for this vital road safety and infrastructure project.

I know that the outcome will come as a considerable relief to many people, particularly the families who, tragically, have lost loved ones on the existing A5 and campaigned tirelessly over many years for a safer road. They campaigned for it through unimaginable grief and loss, and they never gave up. My thoughts are primarily with them as we move into the delivery phase of this life-saving project. Today is their day.

I will take time to consider the detail of the judgement. It does, however, provide important legal clarity and vindicates the Department's position throughout the case that it had complied with the requirements of the Climate Change Act 2022. It is a welcome outcome that provides the certainty that is needed not only for the A5 western transport corridor but for the delivery of major infrastructure projects across the North. I will continue to work with the DAERA and Executive colleagues to support infrastructure delivery while maintaining our climate ambitions.

The need for the A5 has never been clearer. Fundamentally, the scheme is about improving road safety, saving lives, supporting economic growth and delivering a modern transport connection for communities across the north-west. My officials will work at pace to ensure that construction on that important strategic route can begin as soon as possible. That will involve completing the remaining checks and approvals, as well as agreeing costs with the current contractors.

Members will appreciate that any party to the litigation may seek leave to appeal. The Department will respond appropriately to any such application and will continue to act in accordance with legal advice, due process and all statutory requirements.

I appeal to anyone who is considering further legal action to reflect carefully on the lives that are at risk on the existing A5 and the consequences of any further delay, and to refrain from taking action that could prevent that vital road safety project from moving forward.

I also recognise that the judgement has significant implications for the landowners who are affected by the scheme. Many have experienced years of uncertainty as a result of the prolonged legal process. My officials will engage directly with the landowners to explain the implications of the judgement, provide updates on the anticipated next steps and ensure that they continue to receive clear and timely information as the project progresses. Over the coming weeks, I will continue to engage with my Executive colleagues, the Assembly's Infrastructure Committee, local representatives, contractors, supply chain partners and North/South stakeholders. The Department will also publish updated information and guidance to ensure that communities and stakeholders remain informed as matters progress.

Today's decision marks a pivotal moment for the project and is a significant step towards its successful delivery. As I have consistently said, I remain fully committed to progressing the A5 as quickly as possible. Above all, the project is about saving lives. For too long, communities along the A5 have witnessed the devastating consequences of a road that falls short of the standard that people deserve. Too many families have suffered unimaginable loss, and too many have waited for far too long to see progress. While important legal and governance processes remain, the judgement brings us a significant step closer to delivering the safer, modern road network that people across the north-west need and deserve. I am determined that we will now build on the momentum, continue to progress the project responsibly and lawfully and do everything possible to bring forward a safer A5 for current and future generations.

Mr McNulty: We warmly welcome today's ruling. I pay tribute to the bereaved families and the Enough is Enough campaign for their courage and determination.

Minister, you referred to outstanding checks, approvals and an agreement on cost with the contractors. What exactly remains to be done? Will you commit to publishing, within the next fortnight, a clear timetable for completing those steps and starting construction? After almost two decades of waiting, people deserve to know when they will finally see diggers on the ground. When will the road be completed? Is there a budget to complete the road? Can the ruling be challenged?

Ms Kimmins: I outlined the answers to some of those questions in my statement. Let me be very clear: moving ahead with the project is my top priority. We should have started work two years ago, and today the court vindicated that position. The Lady Chief Justice made it very clear that the decision was correct, that the Department had taken the right steps and that my predecessor, John O'Dowd, was correct in his decisions. We have lost two years, and we need to ensure that there are no further delays. The families are at the forefront of my mind, and I will ensure that we continue to move at pace. I have already instructed officials to get on with it because we need to get the road built.

Mr Buckley (The Chairperson of the Committee for Infrastructure): I thank the Minister for coming to the House at the earliest opportunity to provide the statement. In the week that is in it, the irony will not be lost on the people of Northern Ireland that the Minister's first line was that she was "delighted" with the court's ruling. Whilst the judgement provides legal clarity, there is no getting away from the fact that the A5 project has been a disastrous case of mismanagement over many years. Some £200 million has been spent, and not a single yard of tar has been laid. The Minister knows that stakeholder management has been a serious issue. What is the current status of the land along the A5? Has it been vested by the Department, or is it still owned by the landowners? Will she commit to positive engagement with those stakeholders to ensure that we can move forward collectively?

Ms Kimmins: As I said in my statement, officials will be in contact with the landowners at the earliest possible stage, and, for me, that is imminently. My understanding of the ruling is that the lands that were previously vested will return to the ownership of the Department.

Miss Brogan: Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire.

Today is a hugely important day for the people of west Tyrone, and a significant step forward for the delivery of the A5. It was understandably a very emotional day for everyone involved in delivering the project, particularly the families who have lost loved ones on the A5. I think of Kate Corrigan, who lost her son Nathan over the Christmas period a few years ago. She has been at the forefront of the campaign to get the road upgraded, alongside many other families. Does the Minister agree that the campaigners and families deserve enormous credit for their dedication and fortitude?

Ms Kimmins: Absolutely. When I came out of the courtroom today, the emotion from the families, the campaigners and everybody involved in the project was something that I will take with me for the rest of my life, because that is what it is all about. It encapsulates the importance of the A5. It is about saving lives. I know that this will not take away the grief of those families, and it will sadly not bring their loved ones back, but their determination, commitment, courage and efforts to ensure that we never gave up — I gave them the commitment that I would not give up — have led us to where we are today. Therefore, I absolutely commend them, and I hope that they can take some comfort that their efforts have not been in vain and that we will see the road built sooner rather than later.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you for your statement, Minister. My thoughts are with all those who have lost their lives on the A5 and their families. How significant is the ruling in clarifying the application of the Climate Change Act and showing that, despite many views to the contrary, climate action and infrastructure projects can go hand in hand?

Ms Kimmins: While we still have to consider the judgement in full in greater detail, the Lady Chief Justice's analysis to the court today was very clear that that absolutely is the case: we can build major infrastructure projects while remaining within our statutory obligations under the Climate Change Act, which we reaffirmed at every stage. I thank the Member's colleague the AERA Minister for his work and that of his Department. Their collaboration helped us to get to this point. It shows very clearly that, as an Executive flagship project, it was known across the Executive from day 1 that it was something that we intended to pursue, because we know that it is in the greater public interest. It is a very important ruling not just for the A5 but for other infrastructure projects that may have been affected. Some have been delayed as a result. My priority is to keep moving forward and keep making progress, and let us deliver for people.

Ms D Armstrong: Minister, thank you for your statement. Notwithstanding the families affected by the fatalities and accidents on the A5, to whom I acknowledge those significant losses, there is another cohort affected. Will farmers whose land was vested in November 2024, was returned in June 2025 and is now to be vested again be compensated at 2024 values, or will they be compensated at today's market values?

Ms Kimmins: As the Member may be aware, in the legislation, it remains under November 2024 values. That is not within my remit to change. However, every case will be looked at on its own merits, and my officials will engage with those landowners in the time ahead.

Mr McAleer: I was in the courthouse today when the news seeped out from the courtroom that the result was positive, and I have to say that, across Tyrone and beyond last night, the blessed candles were lit and prayers were said for the right result, and, thank God, that result came today. When the results seeped out of the courtroom today, I was in the company of Francie McGarvey, who lost his dear wife, Kathleen, and I think that we cannot overestimate the pain that those families have endured over the years having lost their loved ones. Hopefully, the result today will give them some consolation and hope that there will not be any more lives lost on that terrible road. Minister, given that the court has now made its ruling, can you confirm that moving to construction will be a priority for your Department?

Ms Kimmins: Absolutely. I pay tribute to the family that Declan referred to. Every single family has endured such heartache and grief, and if it gives some consolation, I think that it has been a huge victory for everybody, for that reason alone. As I said, I have instructed officials to start work on it at pace to ensure that we can move ahead to construction at the earliest possible opportunity and to pick up where we left off. That is my priority now and in the time ahead: to get the work under way and get the road completed.

Mr T Buchanan: This road runs right through the very heart of my constituency. Hundreds of acres of land will be cut through, and many farm businesses will be affected. How will you, as Minister, ensure that there will be upfront engagement with the landowners and that they receive clear, timely and concise information, unlike in the past when the information that came to them was practically nil? How will you ensure that farmers are not trampled over but respected, especially by the contractors who will be on site doing the work?

Ms Kimmins: It is certainly not my intention to disrespect anybody. I have set out with officials that we want to ensure that there is timely and constructive engagement with all landowners. I completely understand the disruption that the work may cause for many people and the uncertainty that they have experienced for many years. It is now my priority that we ensure that those timelines are made certain as soon as possible and that we have workable engagement with landowners so that we find ways forward that will ensure that everybody's concerns are addressed as far as possible. My commitment is that we ensure that we keep those lines of communication open. Even in the period since June, we have picked up on any issues that have been brought to my attention and worked hard to ensure that communication is improved where needed and that we continue that engagement. That is my intention going forward.

Mr McMurray: I, too, want to share my sympathies with all the families who have lost loved ones on the A5 and other roads. The loss of life on our roads is all too frequent.

Minister, you mentioned that the judgement provides certainty for the A5 and other major projects across Northern Ireland. The A1 goes through my constituency. It is another very dangerous road that has been due vital safety upgrades for over 16 years. It was further delayed unnecessarily by this court case and your Department's moratorium. My constituents will be keen to hear what today's judgement means for the A1's safety upgrades. Can you give assurances that that project will now resume without delay?

Ms Kimmins: The Member will be aware of my commitment to the A1. It is linked to my constituency. I have been vocal on that for many years. As he will know, the progression of many infrastructure projects has rested on the outcome of the appeal. It is therefore my intention that we move ahead at pace with all those projects, at the various stages, at the earliest possible opportunity. Obviously, we need to consider the judgement in detail to ensure that we do so accurately and do not miss anything that has been set out as part of that. It is my intention, however, that there will be no more delays and that we can get to work on all those projects.

Mr Boggs: Thank you for your statement, Minister. Like you, I stood with members of the McKane, McSorley and Caldwell families, who all lost loved ones on the A5 throughout the years. Given the importance of delivering this project when it comes to road safety, the number of lives lost and the communities impacted on over the years, will you join me in encouraging those who have, to date, opposed the A5 upgrade not to appeal the decision but to allow the road project finally to progress for the benefit of everyone in our constituencies, across the north-west and, indeed, across the island?

Ms Kimmins: Yes, absolutely. In the words of the Lady Chief Justice, the past 20 years have been "long and torturous", particularly for those families, because they have been mired in legal challenge after legal challenge. I hope that the judgement brings some sense and reality to the situation: the decision taken was the right one, and we are doing it for the right reasons. No one has anything to gain from a further legal challenge. This is about saving lives and improving the economic corridor for the entire north-west area and, indeed, as the Member said, our island. I ask those who have objected in the past and have submitted legal challenges to consider what they heard today and what they saw outside that courtroom. You cannot put into words just how much it means to the people who have been impacted on by the loss of life on that road. Let us move ahead and give them some comfort in their grief. Let us get the road built so that no other families go through what, sadly, they have gone through.

Mr K Buchanan: Minister, I am a wee bit confused. While I appreciate the court's ruling, your party has now created complete doubt, given the previous Member's question on whether anybody should challenge that ruling. The other day, the First Minister said in the House that she will do what she thinks is right. One day, you agree with a judge because it suits your narrative to do so. Your party is flipping and flopping like a door. Given that there is that whole grey area now, what will you say to the landowners along that road who cannot possibly agree with the decision? I am not saying that I do not agree with it, but they do not. What will you say to them? On the one hand, you are saying that you do not believe in the courts, but, today, you do. What are you going to say to the landowners?

Ms Kimmins: It is shameful to politic with this issue, if I am honest. What I will say to the landowners is this: "Take me out of it, listen to the families and to those who are living with life-changing injuries as a result of serious collisions on that road and then make your decision".

Mr Gildernew: I thank the Minister for the statement. Minister, I acknowledge your work and the work of the Enough is Enough campaign. Today's decision will be a huge relief to all our communities, including those in Fermanagh and South Tyrone and right along that corridor. None of us who live along that stretch of road has not been impacted on by the death and destruction that has been brought to families and communities. Minister, some people are already talking about costs associated with the A5. Do you agree with me that you cannot put a cost on saving lives and on ensuring that the A5 is made safer for the people of the north-west who depend on that road?

Ms Kimmins: Absolutely. You cannot put a price on the lives that have been lost and the impact that that has had on so many people. I understand that cost is important in any major project. However, the new road will bring road safety benefits for the whole north-west area and will save lives. If it saves one life, for me, that is the most important thing. Therefore, let us focus on what this is really about. It is about improving road safety and ensuring that no more families get that earth-shattering knock on the door, and it is about improving the economy and the connectivity for people right along that corridor and right across our island.

Mr Harvey: Thank you, Minister, for the statement. Minister, will the decision taken today give a green light to other projects, such as the Ballynahinch bypass? Can it still meet its target and proposed start date?

Ms Kimmins: Many of the projects were resting on today's decision, and we did not move ahead because we felt that it would be too much of a risk. We now have a clear line from the court about where we can go next, and it is certainly my intention that we will move ahead with the projects that have been waiting for today's ruling. I will be happy to share the timelines for those projects with Members once we have clarity and have considered the judgement in detail. There are so many projects. The A1 has been mentioned, as has the Ballynahinch bypass and others. My priority is that we make good progress on those projects and get back to where we left off.

Ms Bradshaw: Minister, I join you and others in the Chamber in welcoming today's court ruling. I pay tribute to the families who have campaigned for far too long for that announcement.

Minister, you will be aware that the Lagan pedestrian and cycle bridge has been delayed because of the court proceedings. Can you please give a commitment that your departmental officials will re-engage with Belfast City Council and the people who have been working on the Belfast region city deal to get that project moving again and unlocked? Our streets and arterial routes in South Belfast are completely congested, and that active travel footbridge would be wonderful for my constituents.

Ms Kimmins: I, too, want to see the Lagan pedestrian and cycle bridge built. It is an important scheme, and, obviously, there is funding resting on it. As I said for some of the other projects that have been slowed down as a result of the A5 case and have been awaiting today's decision, we certainly intend to move ahead with those projects as soon as possible.

Mr O'Toole: My constituency colleague Ms Bradshaw has stolen part of my question, but I am happy with that. I, too, would like to ask about the Lagan pedestrian bridge. Minister, you have given an update, but I press for that to happen as soon as possible. Residents there were told that that bridge was delayed because of the A5 judgement.

I also want to stand with you and others in saying that this is a good day. It feels strange to call it a good day, because so many people have lost their lives and there was real emotion among those families. They have suffered a lot of pain, and there is almost relief that the road is now going ahead. Colm Gildernew is right when he says that you cannot put a price on saving lives, but the A5 needs to be budgeted for, Minister. What conversations are you having with the Finance Minister and other colleagues to ensure that that is included in a multi-year Budget, which, hopefully, will be agreed soon?

Ms Kimmins: I give the Member the assurance that it is an Executive flagship project, so that funding remains ring-fenced and has always been factored into Budgets.

Likewise, I was pleased that that commitment was reiterated by my counterparts in the South: Minister O'Brien and others. We have had numerous North/South Ministerial Council (NSMC) meetings in between where that has been reaffirmed. I give the assurance that the funding remains and that our priority is certainly to continue and move ahead as soon as possible.

Mr Boylan: Cuirim fáilte roimh ráiteas an Aire

and concur with some of the commentary from Members who have mentioned people who have lost loved ones. Does the Minister agree that progress on the A5 is a significant development for transport and economic connectivity from the north-west to Dublin?

Ms Kimmins: I agree 100%. That cannot be overstated. People in that part of our island have had poor connectivity for far too long. While the road safety aspect is the key priority and the key reason that we are doing what we are doing, the economic benefits and the connectivity taken right across the stretch of that road are essential and will really transform the whole of the north-west and across our island. It is an exciting time. Yes, it has been delayed, but let us get on with it. Let us get the road built, and let us ensure that the people of west Tyrone and further afield get to realise those benefits sooner rather than later.

Mr Dunne: I thank the Minister for the statement. I welcome the development today and recognise the relief that so many families who have been impacted on greatly by the road will feel. I am also glad to see a Sinn Féin Minister welcoming and respecting a court judgement this week.

Does the Minister accept that landowners have been left in an unacceptable state of uncertainty because of the years of delay and, indeed, confusion surrounding the project? Importantly, will lessons be learned by your Department around the confusion, particularly over the past number of years?

Ms Kimmins: The confusion and uncertainty was not caused by me, my predecessor or my Department; it was caused by those who set out on a crusade to block the building of the road. However, let us put that aside. My commitment now is to ensure that there is no more uncertainty and that, from here on, the road will be built and we will see it completed sooner rather than later. My officials will work closely with those landowners to ensure that they are in absolutely no doubt about what to expect and what the timelines are and, hopefully, allay their concerns and their fears.

Mr Honeyford: Minister, I welcome the statement. All of our thoughts are with the families of the A5. As a Lagan Valley MLA, I know that it links your constituency and the A1, where lives have also been lost. As a Back-Bench MLA, I find it really refreshing to see you and Andrew working together to deliver stuff for the benefit of the people, genuinely, and I thank you for your comments on that. Others would do well to look at how government should be done.

The Minister has answered about the A1, and I appreciate that it is in both our constituencies. Will the Minister confirm that there are no other barriers in the way and that the budget is already sitting there for the A1 upgrade as well as the A5 so that that can proceed as soon as possible?

Ms Kimmins: As the Member will know, I have met Monica Heaney on numerous occasions. I have also met the students of New-Bridge Integrated College, who put a challenging case to me. Telling those young people that we had to put the upgrade on hold for some time was one of the most difficult things that I have had to do as Minister.

Yes, I have been factoring that in to my draft budget as it stands. Obviously, we are still in a live negotiation on what the final Budget settlement will be, but it is certainly my intention that we continue to press ahead with the A1. We also have to consider carefully the full wording of the judgement to take into consideration anything that we have not already been made aware of when moving ahead so that there are no further unnecessary delays.

Mrs Erskine: Minister, nobody in the Chamber has ever argued against the fact that the road is needed for the safety aspects, and, of course, we all think about the lives that have been lost from all sections of the community on the A5.

Your Department will have been planning for this day for some time, and you will have worked through different scenarios that might have arisen today. There will be landowners and families who will sit around the kitchen table tonight trying to plan for their farm businesses going forward. Will you detail the exact time and date when those landowners will have their land handed back to the Department? Does that kick in from tonight? That is crucial, because landowners need to know that for insurance purposes and planning for their farms. I understand that it will revert to the November 2024 vesting orders: will you confirm that this evening for farmers who will be trying to plan tonight?

Ms Kimmins: As I said, we have planned for all scenarios and for what our next steps may or may not be. My understanding is that that will happen imminently. We are still considering the full detail of the judgement. As soon as we know the actual date, we will relay that to the landowners to ensure that there is no ambiguity and no uncertainty going forward. It is my understanding that, if not today, it will happen in the coming days.

Mrs Dodds: Thank you for your statement, Minister. You will not be surprised to know that I was going to ask you about the A1. On a slightly different note, however, after the McAlinden ruling, I understand that property owners spent money on reinstating fences and making good land that had been taken over by contractors. Will those farmers be compensated for doing that? If so, when will they be paid?

Ms Kimmins: The Member may also be aware that a number of options were put on the table at that time through engagement with officials, so it will depend on which option the landowner chose. We will certainly work through those issues with landowners in the coming days and weeks, because I appreciate that it is not a one-size-fits-all situation. There are landowners who have still not made their application for compensation, but we will continue to work closely with them to ensure that all the issues are addressed as soon as possible.

Mr Durkan: I thank the Minister for her very welcome statement. As others have said, this is a good day. We have, however, had good days before. I hope, particularly for those families who have lost loved ones, that there are no further twists in the road.

Minister, you have said that, in effect, today's ruling gives the green light to other projects that had been paused, and I hope that the Buncrana Road is included among them. Although I concur that no cost can be put on protecting human life and acknowledge that funding for the A5, as an Executive flagship project, will be protected, has the Minister given consideration to her Department's ability to deliver the other projects that will now be unlocked?

Ms Kimmins: The Member will appreciate that those projects are all at different stages. Until we got the A5 ruling last year, we were going through the process of moving ahead with all of them. We are under no illusion that doing that will be challenging. It is, however, my intention that we pick up from where we left off at the earliest possible stage. I do not foresee there being any issues with delivery. The majority of the projects have been factored into any budgetary planning, but if there are any issues, we will make the House aware of them. At this point, however, it is, as I said, my intention that we pick up from where we left off.

Ms Forsythe: I thank the Minister for bringing a statement to the Assembly so promptly after the judgement. It is very important, and everyone, I am sure, greatly appreciates it.

I will build on the questions from my two colleagues to my right. For those who own land and who are due to move into the vesting process, what specific timeline are we talking about? Should they expect to receive correspondence tonight, tomorrow or within days? For those who are waiting on outstanding compensation and who have put thousands of pounds into reinstating infrastructure, what timeline we are talking about? Are we talking days or weeks? Whatever the timeline is, will you communicate it to them as soon as possible?

Ms Kimmins: I have outlined how we will engage with them imminently. I will also say that compensation is dealt with through Land and Property Services, as the Member may be aware. Whatever information we can communicate, however, we absolutely will communicate.

Mr Kingston: There is deep irony in a Sinn Féin Minister's accepting a ruling from the Court of Appeal this week. They think that they can pick and choose.

Minister, now that you have got the green light for major infrastructure projects to proceed, will you look again at, and advance planning for, the York Street interchange in North Belfast?

Ms Kimmins: The York Street interchange has remained on the agenda. I met Belfast Chamber last week. I know that there is a keen interest in seeing it progress. As someone who comes along the Westlink most days to get to here, I know that it is badly needed. We are therefore scoping that out. There is no funding attached to York Street interchange at this time, but it is something that we will consider. Hopefully, if we can get a Budget agreed, we will see good progress made on it as we move into the next mandate.

Mr Gaston: Many landowners along the A5 still passionately object to the project. They may even regard the court's judgement today as morally wrong. Will the Minister support any objector who defies that court ruling and blocks the work from taking place? Is that not the lesson that objectors can draw from the First Minister of lawlessness and her morally bankrupt colleagues on the Sinn Féin Benches?

Ms Kimmins: I really do not know what —. I have made it clear that today is about the families and those who lost loved ones on that road. It is about ensuring that we make good progress. The Member may not want to see delivery, progress or this place moving forward, but we certainly do. We stand by that. Let us get the road built.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): Members, that concludes questions on the statement. Will those Members who are leaving do so quietly? We can then sort out the final item in the Order Paper.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Blair): As Members were advised earlier — [Interruption.]

Members. [Interruption.]

As Members were advised earlier, I have been notified that the proposer will not speak to the Adjournment topic that is in the Order Paper.