Inspire Public Affairs Update 09/02/26

Week commencing 09/02/2026

Inspire’s public affairs update is your source for the latest Northern Ireland Assembly discussions relevant to mental health, addiction, intellectual disability and autism. 

Our aim is to inform the public, our colleagues and the people who use Inspire services about pertinent issues in the political space, issues that should always be informed by the voice of lived experience. 

On 2nd February, the First and deputy First Minister answered questions from MLAs. 

• Mark H. Durkan MLA asked them to confirm how many times the Northern Ireland Executive’s working group on mental wellbeing, resilience and suicide prevention has met in the past two years.
• According to the deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, the Executive working group met once in two years, with another meeting planned.
• MLAs criticised the lack of meetings amid rising suicide rates and cuts to mental health funding.
• The deputy First Minister said strategies exist but are underfunded and work is happening through cross‑departmental collaboration.
• She stressed the need to embed suicide‑prevention work across multiple programmes and target high‑risk groups, especially young men and people in deprived areas.
• The All‑Party Group on Suicide Prevention’s recently launched inquiry may help identify cross‑departmental funding and improve coordination.
• She emphasised the need to break down departmental silos and mainstream mental health interventions across wider Executive policies.

On 4th February, the All-Party Group on Dual Diagnosis met to discuss drugs- and alcohol-related deaths.

• John Hughes from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency opened the meeting with a presentation on drug and alcohol related deaths from 2019 to 2023.
• He pointed out that 70% of drug-related deaths are male.
• The average age of men dying from drug-related death is 34; it’s 41 for women.
•  The areas with the highest numbers of drug-related deaths are north and west Belfast. The lowest were West Tyrone and South Down.
• He said that the key risk factors for drug-related deaths are: poor mental health, disability, low educational attainment, economic inactivity, lone-parent households, divorce or separation, deprivation and poverty.
•  Ashling Diamond, an emergency medicine doctor, spoke about the pevailing profile of drug users. She stated that polydrug consumption is now the norm.
•  Tim McQuade from Depaul said that the most common drugs seen on drug-related death certificates are alcohol, pregabalin and benzos, usually together.
•  Órlaithí Flynn MLA referenced a pending Northern Ireland Assembly motion on rapid drug testing. The motion, she confirmed, has received support from the Minister of Justice, Naomi Long. She hopes to meet with the Minister of Health, Mike Nesbitt, soon to discuss the matter further.

On 5th February, Mike Farrar, the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health, briefed the Committee for Health on community care and patient flow in hospitals. 

• He told MLAs that the health system is not currently working as it should be, even while the treatment provided is of the highest quality. However, he said that the focus now is on moving care into the community and working to prevent people from needing to be hospitalised.
• He denied that the health service is a failed one and contended that the Department understands what needs to be done to improve outcomes and direct resources appropriately.
• He re-emphasised the Department of Health’s commitment to the neighbourhood model, which will, he said, enable the Department and the Minister to make strategic decisions. He pointed out that the model is already making progress in some areas, such as the distribution of psychiatrists across Northern Ireland’s health and social care trusts.
• His colleague, Tracey McCaig, confirmed that the Health and Social Care NI website hosts a dashboard that tracks the number of individuals staying in wards who are medically fit to be discharged but have not, for whatever reason, left hospital settings.
• The Department’s Peter Toogood added that achieving consistency across the health trusts remains challenging, in response to questions on collaboration and delivery of social care services.
• He told MLAs that they intend to roll out the neighbourhood model in three waves over the next year, with a particular focus on sharing best practice. Guidance on the model will be issued to the health and social care trusts in due course.

Week commencing 9th February

Ministerial questions: Minister of Health – 9th February

Assembly debate: social media restrictions for children and young people – 10th February

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