Nicola Grant has commented on the resignation saying the Workers Party notes that once again another highly paid chief executive has left the service, and we wonder have they gone to pastures new or is it a case of deserting the sinking ship?

Nicola continued what we do know for certain is that she has left at a time of great crisis for the Health Services in the Southern Trust. There is a major detriment for those people who desperately need fully functioning health care facilities to meet the levels of health inequalities many working class people are forced to endure.

The Workers Party have already made detailed comments on the Minster’s recent three-year strategic health plan, which offers nothing new for dealing with the health needs of the people in Newry Armagh or beyond, but promises more local hospital closures, more privatisation and more fragmentation. The plan is based on taking hundreds of millions of pounds out in so called efficiency savings, the same type of spreadsheet economics that created the crisis in the first place. And there is an aspiration to seek support for the introduction of prescription charges and home-care charges.

Nicola concluded that the Health Service we have cherished is now being dismantled before our very eyes. Nye Bevan said that there will always be a Health Service free at the point of entry as long as there are those who are willing to fight for it. People, it is now time to begin that fight back in earnest.