RCPsych in NI’s priorities highlighted in Committee for Health meetings

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The work and priorities of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Northern Ireland have been recognised in Committee for Health meetings at Stormont.

The Committee Chair highlighted his engagement with the College, and Northern Ireland’s Mental Health Champion has asked the College to provide evidence on current psychiatric workforce challenges ahead of an upcoming Public Accounts Committee meeting.

At a recent meeting of the Committee for Health at Stormont, Chair Philip McGuigan MLA raised concerns about workforce shortages and a lack of training posts.  He referenced his engagement with RCPsych in NI, noting that the limited number of training places remains a key concern for the College. Despite a workforce strategy being in place since 2018, the Chair stressed that he had not seen sufficient evidence of progress in addressing the issue.

Committee for Health meeting (watch from 42 mins, 16 secs)

The meeting was attended by the newly appointed Minister of Health, Robbie Butler MLA. During the meeting, he said:

“My challenge is to make the NHS in Northern Ireland the place to work, the place that people want to work… it’s going to be a fundamental driver for me in my short time, and hopefully there will be a bit of a legacy of that. But it is a significant priority, because we can deliver nothing if we don't have the right people in the right place.”

At a subsequent meeting, Órlaithí Flynn MLA highlighted significant concerns that key mental health data is still not being systematically collected or routinely published. She reinforced that a lack of accurate, publicly available data is making it more difficult to assess need, monitor outcomes and inform policy development.

Her comments reflect the College’s longstanding calls for comprehensive mental health data to support service planning and drive meaningful improvements for mental health services across Northern Ireland.

Órlaithí Flynn underscored a fundamental challenge facing mental health services and questioned how outcomes can be improved without reliable and consistent data to inform decision-making and evaluate the effectiveness of services.

In response, Mike Farrar, Interim Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health, explained that a sub-group had been established following the introduction of Encompass (the digital health and social care records system) and was actively working to improve data collection in this area. He said he hoped that more comprehensive data would soon be pulled together and published, although he acknowledged that this was still likely to be one or two years away.

Committee for Health meeting (watch from 1hr, 34 mins, 56 secs)

Ahead of a Public Accounts Committee meeting on 5 November, the Mental Health Champion, Professor Siobhan O'Neill, has asked the College to provide evidence on current psychiatric workforce challenges. The Committee are examining progress on the implementation of the Mental Health Workforce Review Implementation and Delivery Framework Report, including the impact of ongoing workforce shortages on the delivery of mental health services across Northern Ireland.

 The Mental Health Champion intends to draw on the College’s evidence during the meeting to help inform discussions on the scale and nature of these challenges and to explore how the Public Accounts Committee can influence and support the actions needed to address them.

RCPsych in NI will continue to advocate for the policy reforms, workforce investment and data improvements needed to ensure mental health services are equipped to meet growing demand across Northern Ireland.

The College's  manifesto for the 2027 Northern Ireland Assembly election is calling for urgent and decisive action to address these longstanding challenges before it’s too late.