Ulster Unionist Health Spokesperson Roy Beggs MLA has said the latest publication of health waiting times reveals the scale of the frightening pressures currently engulfing the local health service.
Roy Beggs said:
“Our health service is in the midst of a wholly unprecedented crisis – both in terms of scale and severity.
“A figure of 95,000 outpatients alone waiting longer than a year to see a consultant, out of a population of only 1.8million, is as staggering as it is terrifying.
“The £30m funding package – an attempted short term fix made available through the DUP/Conservative confidence and supply arrangement – has simply not worked.
“If these equivalent hospital waiting times were occurring anywhere else in the UK it would rightly cause outrage and be a national scandal, and yet in Northern Ireland it is now simply taken for granted that every publication of figures will be worse than the one that came before.
“Health waiting times are reported as a trigger for actions as it is medically accepted that the longer patients are forced to wait for treatment, the greater the harm they may ultimately come to. There is no doubt whatsoever that the health of local patients is being adversely affected by the delays.
“On the day that the Northern Ireland budget has been published I see no signs whatsoever that anything is being done to get to grips with this crisis.
“Frantically moving money around at the very last moment and using clever accounting techniques to temporarily fill major gaps in the budget is the worst possible way to try to reform and improve the delivery of essential public services.
“The Secretary of State needs to intervene. Crucial health decisions are being deferred as a result of the local political stalemate. Unless immediate action is taken to restore a local Health Minister, Direct Rule must be introduced now.”
