Ulster Unionist Party Leader Steve Aiken MLA has warned that waiting times will continue to increase as the gap between demand and capacity in the local health service continues to widen.

Steve Aiken said:

“There is an unprecedented crisis in our health service. Never before in the history of Northern Ireland have so many people been forced to wait, and to wait for so long. My Party has been warning for several years that patients were coming to harm as a result of the abhorrent delays, yet the situation locally is unrecognisable now to even 2 years ago.   

“Indeed, when the Ulster Unionist Party last held the health portfolio at Stormont there were 15,000 patients waiting longer than 18 weeks. The latest figures for this year show that there are now 134,160 inpatients and outpatients waiting over 52 weeks. The figures are genuinely terrifying.

“I really believe that if the waiting times being experienced here were occurring anywhere else in the United Kingdom it would be an national scandal and heads would role. Yet outrageously in Northern Ireland the problem is spiralling month by month and there is nothing other than a passive acceptance at the top of the Health Department.

“The reality is that demand for elective care services right across Northern Ireland continues to far exceed funded health service capacity for both new outpatients and inpatient/daycase treatments. As a result, it is inevitable that waiting times will increase. Until the gap is narrowed, and then closed entirely, there is no other possible outcome.

“Whilst I recognise that some hard decisions do need to be taken – and my Party stands ready to take them - until we actually start reinvesting in more permanent staff, hospital beds and theatre space, then the problems we are experiencing will not be resolved.

“It is intolerable that there are cancer patients not being diagnosed on time, orthopaedic patients being told they’ll have to wait in pain for another 4 years, and NHS nurses who are about to go out on strike while staff who work on the same wards but are employed by profit making recruitment agencies are getting paid far more for working less hours. That is why it has now reached the point that health powers need to be sent back to Westminster to allow key decisions to be taken - we simply no longer have any choice.”