Many Northern Ireland Covid dead ‘victims of dire NHS’ UK inquiry told

​The coronavirus emergency hit a health system that was already “near collapse” due to years of underinvestment and political dysfunction, a group representing bereaved relatives claimed.

Northern Ireland’s under-pressure health service has the longest waiting lists in the UK.

Major plans to reform and restructure the system have been stalled by a series of political impasses at Stormont.

At a preliminary hearing on the scheduled Northern Ireland module of the UK-wide Covid-19 inquiry, a group representing families of those who lost loved ones in the pandemic said the state of the health service prior to March 2020 must be examined.

Brenda Campbell KC, representing Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, made the case to inquiry chair Baroness Hallett at the virtual hearing yesterday afternoon.

“Whilst, of course, this is not an inquiry into the pre-existing state of health services or public services … we contend that so far as Northern Ireland is concerned, the inquiry must acknowledge, again either by way of expert evidence or otherwise, the really perilous state of public services in Northern Ireland before the onset of the pandemic,” she said.

“Many of our families are in no doubt that their loved ones were ultimately victims of a health and social care system in a state of near collapse.

“The fact that it has been in a state of near collapse is widely recognised, both in literature and also in expert evidence given to other court cases in Northern Ireland.

“So, it’s our submission that the impact of that austerity that we have addressed in our written submissions, combined with the long periods of the absence of a functioning executive, left the prevailing health care system and social care system in a dire state before the pandemic, and decisions made, and this is important in terms of bringing it within the scope (of the inquiry), that those pre-existing pressures were real, and that decisions made in the context of those have got to be examined.

“Therefore, in order to properly consider the impact of the pandemic on health and social care in Northern Ireland, we must first understand the prior state of the healthcare system.”

Ms Campbell said the current political stalemate at Stormont and lack of functioning political institutions made the Northern Ireland module of the UK inquiry all the more important for the families.