ON being appointed the north’s new health minister, Robbie Butler said he wanted this place “to have a world-class health service that people can access more quickly”.

What a fatuous thing to say. There’s absolutely nothing he can do to make that happen and he must know that.

Indeed, his own party leader has made the prospect of even minimal reform here more improbable by his disastrous intervention in Coleraine.

The Bengoa report has been gathering dust now for a decade. It had cross-party support but no local minister had either the guts or the political ability to implement it.

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At the very least Bengoa recommended rationalising medical provision here, but no Stormont MLA would support running down services in their constituency.

Here’s the simple fact that Dr Clodagh Corrigan, deputy chair of the BMA here, put in a nutshell to the BBC last week.

The north “does not have the surgeons and the staff to have all specialities across all sites”. Therefore some places have to lose some provision.

She added: “There has been an abject failure of workforce planning over the course of very many years.”

Her analysis was supported by the health department’s permanent secretary, speaking to........

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