Swann apologises to those on waiting lists as proposed budget thrown into doubt

Robin Swann said the opportunity for the ‘massive rebuilding job’, with a multi-year Budget, has been ‘selfishly and cruelly taken away’.

Northern Ireland Minister of Health Robin Swann (Liam McBurney/PA)

Northern Ireland’s Health Minister has said he wants to apologise to those on waiting lists, after the resignation of the First Minister threw the proposed Stormont Budget into doubt.

Robin Swann said his department, even during the coronavirus pandemic, had laid out the rebuilding of the health service.

However he told a press conference in Belfast that the opportunity for the “massive rebuilding job” with a multi-year Budget, has been “selfishly and cruelly taken away”.

“As I stand here today on February 7, I have no clear information at all on what the health Budget will look like in less than eight weeks’ time,” he said.

I truly want to apologise for all those people in Northern Ireland who are now being left in an uncertain place as to where we will be in eight weeks time

Health Minister Robin Swann

“That’s a staggering state of affairs.”

Mr Swann said officials had set out an elective care strategy with clear targets to reduce waiting times to a year, in five years’ time, which, while challenging, was assessed as “achievable”.

“That needed recurrent funding, it needed assurity of financial support for that period of time.

“Also the same with our mental health strategy, £1.2 billion needed over the next ten years to put all those actions into place, and a cancer strategy that is currently out for consultation,” he said.

“All those are predicated on the assurity of an Executive being able to provide collective support, but also collective financial support for the job that needed to be done.”

Asked what he would say to all those on waiting lists, Mr Swann said: “I want to say I’m sorry.

“I truly want to apologise for all those people in Northern Ireland who are now being left in an uncertain place as to where we will be in eight weeks time.

“We in the health service and the people working across our health service family have been working over the last two years to counter a pandemic, but also to put in place those building blocks to rebuild our health service.

“So when we did reach the point where we are now at, when we see a reversal of the number of cases, the hospitalisations, that we start to re-energise our health service, to get back to doing the core work that it wants to do, the people working in it want to do … but that’s been thrown into that uncertainty that is leaving us all in a situation where we want to move forward, but not just have we one hand tied behind our backs, we have both hands tied behind our backs.”