The following is a speech by North Antrim MLA Jim Allister during a debate on the Compton Report yesterday (Monday):

“In five minutes, one cannot hope to address all of the many issues in the report that deserve to be addressed, so I will focus on one: the provision of acute health services as it affects my constituency. Causeway Hospital is the focus of that, and it was provided at a time when we were assured that it was an ample replacement for the Route Hospital. We were assured that it would be an abiding presence in that area and that it would serve that area. It made excellent provision, and, over the years, it has demonstrated good use of its modern facilities. Indeed, it has well met a regional need in that regard. However, it is now plain to anyone who cares to look that, sadly, the Minister and his party intend to downgrade the Causeway.

“Of course, when hospital downgrades are on the way, one is never upfront about them. If you are the Minister or the Department, you usually use some sleight of hand to produce closure. It is always clouded in deliberate ambiguity. Take the City Hospital’s A&E department, which, we were told, would be only a temporary closure. Everyone knows that it is not just a temporary closure. Take the Causeway as far back as 2009. We had the first signs, with the closure and removal of the microbiology laboratory from Coleraine to Antrim. At the time, I warned that that was a forerunner to the ultimate downgrading of acute services.

“Over the years at the Causeway, clinical posts were left unfilled, and there was a heavy reliance on locums. The official excuse began to evolve of the inability to find suitable staff. That feeds into the master plan to downgrade the Causeway, and, on cue, along comes the Compton review, about which the Minister will not even consult but which is handed down as a done deal with only the detail left for discussion. Such detail includes whether there will be five or seven acute hospitals. Be it five or seven, one thing is clear: Causeway is not envisaged by the Department as being one of them. Denuding the north-east of the Province of acute hospital services may be a small thing to the Minister, but it is a very big deal for the people of north Antrim and of east Londonderry that he intends to rob them of their existing level of acute provision.

“It will not wash to say: “Oh, you will have a better service elsewhere”. Elsewhere cannot cope. We saw that last weekend, in Antrim, with the overflow of trolley use and the cancellation of some of the following week’s hospital operations in order to get beds. So, it cannot be coped with elsewhere, and that is not something that people should be persuaded about.

“When it comes to hospital closures and downgrades, the touchstone is how many acute beds we have at present. How many will we have after the event?

“It seems quite clear to me that, when you look at the cumulative provision for the north-east of the Province, we will have many fewer acute beds after the Minister and his party get their way in respect of the Causeway than we have at the moment.”