Conor Murphy under fire after claiming lockdown necessary because of under-funded NHS

Mr Murphy claimed that Northern Ireland could have avoided the lockdown, but “years of Tory austerity” left the health service in a challenging position.

The Sinn Fein minister told BBC’s Good Morning Ulster that if Northern Ireland had a “robust health service which was well resourced”, it could have coped with the pandemic.

“The reason we had to go into lockdown, and people should understand this, is because the health service has been under-resourced through austerity cuts for many, many years,” he said.

When asked about the comments on Wednesday, First Minister Arlene Foster said she did not want to get into a “political row” about how the NHS is funded.

“I think what is important is that if look right across the world everybody went into lockdown for a number of reasons and one of those reasons that was common was the fact that we want to protect our health services,” Mrs Foster said.

“We have seen the way in which health services in places like Italy and Spain were impacted and the fact they were overwhelmed.

“We wanted to make sure that we weren’t overwhelmed and I was very pleased to see the way in which we were able to manage the pandemic – and indeed, our health service was not overwhelmed.

“Therefore I think people shouldn’t very much welcome that.

“I think the Executive have worked very well together in a collaborative way around moving out of lockdown. We always knew that coming back out of lockdown was going to be more difficult because you’re doing it in a step-by-step process as opposed to just everything closing down.”

Mr Murphy’s comments have also been criticised by the Minister for Health Robin Swann, who took “exception” to the remarks.

He said that Northern Ireland went into lockdown with the rest of the world.

Mr Swann told the BBC: “It wasn’t because our health service wasn’t fit to cope. No health service was fit to cope with what we saw.”

Meanwhile, Mrs Foster also said the two-metre distancing rule remains in place in Northern Ireland.

She said that while it is a matter for discussion across the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the advice from Northern Ireland’s chief medical officer Michael McBride is that the two-metre rule is the “safest place to be”.

“It’s not just about two meters, it’s the length of time you are at two metres,” she added.

“One meter at three minutes is the same as two meters at 15 minutes.

“That shows you the challenges we have, but it is about managing risk and what is the appropriate risk in the appropriate setting.

“We again are having those discussions and those will continue. We need to absolutely look at how we can move to a one metre scenario in different settings, but to understand the risk associated with that and then how that risk is managed.”

On Tuesday the region saw a third consecutive day of no new deaths with Covid-19 reported.