Health service in Northern Ireland would ’embarrass a third world country’

Giving evidence to MPs on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Mr Eastwood added that the health service in the region had “basically collapsed”.

Northern Ireland has the worst hospital waiting list figures in the UK and the Department of Health is facing significant budgetary pressures.

Speaking about the implications of having no devolved government at Stormont, Mr Eastwood referred to health services.

He said: “We have to get to a point where we don’t just have a government, which would be a nice start, but we have a govermment which delivers for people.

“Where we don’t have a society where a quarter of the population of Northern Ireland is on a hospital waiting list.

“Those lists are getting longer.

“It is scandalous that the health service, which has basically collapsed in Northern Ireland, would embarrass a third world country.

“I have people in my constituency going to the credit union to borrow money so they can get private healthcare, because there is no other way of doing it.”

He added: “We talk about the NHS and we all love the NHS, we all love the people who work in the NHS, we talk about in these mystical terms.

“The whole point of it is it’s supposed to be free at the point of delivery, but if you can’t get access to it there is no delivery, so you end up paying for it.”

Figures released last week showed that 416,022 patients in Northern Ireland were waiting for a first consultant-led outpatient appointment by June 30 – this was up 3.7% from March 31 and 10.1% higher than at June 30 2022.

Almost half (203,682) of the patients were waiting for more than the draft target waiting time of 52 weeks.