Bringing an Urgent Oral Question to the Assembly today (20 Oct), the East Antrim MLA warned that while a limited number of measures in the plan have some value, they will not sufficiently address the breadth of additional challenges expected this winter.

Mr Donnelly, who is Deputy Chair of Stormont’s Health Committee, has said: “The Department may be able to claim some success by publishing the plan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will make a real difference to patients and health workers on the ground.

“A lot of what is in this plan appears to simply be a repeat of what we’ve seen in previous years. These are good initiatives, but they clearly have not been enough to deal with the scale of the pressure our health service is under without also being accompanied by meaningful reform and new approaches.

“Publishing a plan earlier than last year or ticking off vague business plan targets is not progress if nothing actually changes for staff and service users. The system is already at breaking point and doing the same thing again will not deliver a different outcome.

"I brought an Urgent Oral Question to the Assembly today to emphasise that, especially given the delay, the plan should have been centred around new ideas to properly prepare for and tackle winter pressures. It's with great concern that it looks more like a list of recycled actions designed to look like progress rather than actually deliver it.”