Arlene Foster: I have confidence in Robin Swann, the executive is not ‘collapsing in disarray’

Ms Foster was speaking on Friday morning after deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill claimed on Thursday night that Mr Swann had been “too slow” to act on issues such as testing and personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare staff.

She told the BBC: “We need to look at what the department of health has been faced with, they have been working very hard on a whole range of areas including workforce recruitment, they have put out an appeal for more people to come forward, they have brought forward specific Northern Ireland modelling so that we can have live data to make decisions on, which is critically important.

“We have a network of private care Covid centres, we have the reconfiguration of our hospital services, including the tower block at the City Hospital being made into a Nightingale hospital, and all the while dealing with the pressures around making sure that we have enough personal protective equipment for our frontline workers, and indeed having enough testing capacity as well.”

Asked if she had confidence in Mr Swann, Ms Foster responded: “I do, yes.”

Ms Foster denied the executive is “collapsing into disarray”.

“It’s not collapsing into disarray, it’s very important to recognise that we are coming forward as a five-party executive, I as the First Minister have a leadership role in that and I am trying to pull people together, and I speak to all of the ministers and pull us all together,” she said.

“I think it is recognised that we are living through abnormal times.

“When the executive was set up, and I think people need to reflect on this, but just at the beginning of this year we knew that there would be challenges ahead, but none of us knew we were coming into the challenge that we are facing at this point in time, a challenge that we share with governments right across the world.”