No money for new emergency department, says minister

A new emergency department (ED) at Altnagelvin hospital remains a priority project but there is currently no funding for it, Northern Ireland's health minister has said.

Robbie Butler, who visited the Londonderry hospital on Wednesday, said a new ED would be "incredibly high on the project list if the money becomes available".

A new ED is one of two Western Health and Social Care Trust priority capital projects and has an estimated cost of around £73m.

Altnagelvin's emergency department - the oldest one operating around-the-clock in Northern Ireland - was designed to treat about 40,000 patients a year but is now dealing with up to twice that amount.

The minister said the ongoing work by the trust had helped mitigate the waiting times at the ED but that these were still "much too long".

"People living in this area will know that acutely," he said. "They're messaging me, they're emailing me, and I hear those messages.

"But the senior leadership team of the Western Trust, like me, have an ambition to see that reset and transformed.

"If the money became available, I would say the case has been well made."

In July 2025, the trust submitted revised proposals for the new emergency department at Altnagelvin to the Department of Health.

At that time, Butler's predecessor Mike Nesbitt told the Stormont Assembly that any progress would depend on the availability of both capital funding and the running costs.

Meanwhile, Butler also told BBC News NI the Secretary of State Sir Chris Bryant had fallen short in relation to what is being offered on the budget.

The executive has not agreed a budget for this year, blaming the UK's devolution funding formula for leaving it short.

Extra funding of about £1.5bn would be released in three tranches, with £525m available this year.

Bryant has accused executive ministers of being financially "irresponsible".

Butler said: "I don't agree with the secretary of state on this because we are not funded at the agreed level of need."

Josephine Reid has been coming to Altnagelvin's emergency department and her GP for five weeks.

Reid said "there's not even a seat for us to sit in here", adding that she has been told to go home and if the pain gets worse, to come back.

"I've sat out the back, you know, in majors one, two and three with pensioners, one of them was 91 years of age, sat for two full days on a hard chair. There was no cubicle, no bed, nothing," she told BBC News NI.

She said there is "not enough staff, there's not enough space and to be honest, people are being neglected".

Francis McWilliams said he took heart pains and spent three days in a chair at Altnagelvin emergency department in January, with 15 others and one nurse looking after them all.

He said about eight weeks ago he took pains in his heart again.

"I was sent to Omagh. I went to Omagh hospital they said yes, I had a heart attack and proceeded to bring me here in an ambulance to Altnagelvin A&E.

"I was taken out of A&E and left in the outside waiting room, I sat for 15 hours, I never saw a doctor, I never saw a nurse, I'm diabetic, I needed food - nobody came to see if I needed food, what about my bloods or whatever or nothing else?

"Eventually I went home, they rang me some nine hours later to ask me where I was in the hospital, I said I was at home".

McWilliams said the health minister needs to pay the auxiliary workers on the outside to get the people in the hospital into community care and free up beds in the hospital.