Let us see any evidence that outsourcing to private companies has improved waiting list times

August 31st 2026

Over the past few days there has been much talk about how we must ensure that the Bengoa reforms are implemented . There would seem to be collective amnesia around its failed forerunner, ‘Transforming Your Care’, which was abandoned because of public outcry but sadly not before serious damage was inflicted on our health and social care services.

The wholesale privatisation of home care services and residential and nursing homes was a primary cause as were the bed closures, staffing cuts, and the deliberate decision to recruit staff through agencies as a covert, and costly, way of depleting permanent staff numbers.

The Workers Party has opposed the introduction of the Bengoa Reforms since the consultation period because it contains all the same core principles of Transforming Your Care. The privatisation and fragmentation of health and social care, centralisation of hospital services, and greater decision-making powers for senior medical staff and managers. To cap all this Bengoa also wants to introduce performance related pay for those who deliver these reforms.

Bengoa offers nothing in the way of dealing with our major health inequalities or their roots in intergenerational poverty, poor housing, lack of employment and all the other deprivations faced by the working-class. Bengoa, whilst paying lip service to these issues, offers no realistic solutions. In fact, its implementation will lead to an even greater crisis and will sound the death knell of our National Health Service. Our politicians in Stormont and in local councils have been much too eager to allow planning permission for large corporations to build private health care facilities and this trend has gone largely unchallenged by elected representatives.

Northern Ireland has the highest rates of health inequalities and poverty in western Europe, yet our politicians are still demanding that Bengoa be implemented in full. The question must now be asked, whose interests are they representing? They are certainly not serving the interests of their own constituents, or the citizens of Northern Ireland. It is time to stop Bengoa and have a serious inclusive debate about delivering high-quality health and social care services, based on the founding principles of our NHS.