Staff 'not fully engaging' with review into delayed maternity hospital

The new maternity hospital is already a decade behind schedule

Some Belfast Trust staff are "not fully engaging" with a review into the city's long-delayed maternity hospital, Stormont's health minister has said.

The project on the Royal Victoria site has cost £97m so far and is already a decade behind schedule after a series of setbacks.

Mike Nesbitt said he understood some staff were not "as forthcoming as we might have expected them to be" in a review examining "what has gone wrong".

The Belfast Trust said staff would "cooperate with any review". The Department of Health (DoH) said a report was "due to be finalised soon".

The DoH said the report was commissioned by the Belfast Trust to look at the events leading up to handover and post-handover of the new maternity hospital, specifically relating to the water system.

Nesbitt gave the update in response to a question from Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) assembly member Diane Dodds.

Speaking in the Northern Ireland Assembly on Monday, she asked him why a review into the "debacle of the handover" of the maternity hospital "has been discontinued".

Nesbitt replied: "It is my understanding - but I await a formal briefing on this - that a couple of the workforce in the Belfast Trust perhaps weren't as forthcoming as we might have expected them to be in terms of engagement in that review process."

The trust took possession of the new building in March 2024 and it was expected to open this year

The Department of Health has said the review has not been discontinued.

Nesbitt added it was "not acceptable" if staff in the trust or his department were "not fully engaging in any review or investigation into what has gone wrong".

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) minister said the maternity hospital was "badly needed" and delays in its opening have "cost an awful lot" to the public purse.

"I will await a formal briefing and then I will make my decision," he told assembly members (MLAs).

High levels of the bacteria pseudomonas aeruginosa were discovered in the water system in July 2024

The trust took possession of the new hospital building in March 2024 and it was expected to open this year.

But in July 2024, the trust said high levels of the bacteria pseudomonas aeruginosa were discovered in the water system.

Pseudomonas infection killed three babies at Belfast's Royal Jubilee Hospital in 2012.

It does not usually affect healthy people but infants and people with weakened immune systems are vulnerable.

In June, the health minister told MLAs the opening of the new maternity hospital could be delayed by another 28 months.