Matthew Robinson

💊 This winter, Ask your Pharmacist Health Minister Robbie Butler visited Pond Park Pharmacy in Lisburn to meet the team and see the vital work community pharmacies do for local people. "Ask your pharmacist for advice on colds, flu and sore throats. You do not need an appointment for this." Your local pharmacy can help 👇 🤧 Advice on colds, flu and sore throats through Pharmacy First, with no appointment needed 💉 Flu and COVID-19 vaccines at participating pharmacies, if you're eligible 📍 Care closer to home, as part of the new Neighbourhood Model 💻 And with the £42m ePharmacy programme, paper prescriptions are being replaced with a fully digital system from GP to pharmacy. "Community Pharmacies are one of the main pillars in our Health and Social Care system and are often the front door to health services in our communities across Northern Ireland." Find out where to get vaccinated: nidirect.gov.uk/information-…

Ulster Unionist Party Leader Jon Burrows MLA has formally asked Irish Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan TD to review his decision not to hold an inquiry into how explosives made by Irish Industrial Explosives (IIE) were diverted to terrorists during the Troubles. He has sent the Minister a research paper setting out evidence he says the Government’s response does not address. Jon Burrows said: “The Minister’s position is that IIE explosives turning up in Northern Ireland does not show any failure by the State to stop them being diverted. I don’t believe that stands up against the records, so I have put those records in front of him. “Start with the scale. The Minister’s own letter says IIE was sending 15 tons of explosives a week into Northern Ireland and had around 60% of the market here. Yet when the UK’s Chief Inspector of Explosives visited Enfield in 1972, he put the plant’s annual gelignite production at 32 tons. Those two figures do not sit easily together and they need explaining. Any inquiry also has to go beyond the factory gates, to how these explosives were transported, sold and stored at licensed mines and quarries. “The warnings were there from the very start. In November 1971 the Dáil was told of seven gelignite raids in little over two months. That September, more than 2,400 lbs of explosives had been taken from Drogheda Cement Company. In the Seanad, Professor Kelly went as far as calling for production to be halted for a year. I want to know what the Government did with those warnings, and whether it was anywhere near enough. “Nor did the problem go away. Irish Government files show that in 1975, 1,282 lbs of undyed IIE explosives were recovered in Northern Ireland, around 62% of the recorded total. The records carry on through to 1986, and in those examined for 1981 and 1982, virtually all of the gelignite recovered or defused was identified as IIE. That is more than ten years after the alarm was first raised in the Dáil. “This is not just about gelignite either. A 1974 file refers to forensic analysis of around 50,000 lbs of ANFO recovered from three illegal plants in the Republic. An inquiry has to look at how the IRA got hold of commercial explosives and the materials to make its own.” He added: “Let me be clear about what we are saying and what we are not. This is not an allegation against IIE as it is today, its owners or its staff. Nor are we claiming every bomb can be traced back to Enfield. Finding IIE explosives in forensic records is not the same as proving how each consignment reached terrorists, and establishing that is exactly what an inquiry is for.” The UUP Leader has asked the Minister to reconsider a full, independent statutory public inquiry and to respond properly to the evidence in the paper. “This cuts across departments, agencies and both sides of the border. It is about what the authorities knew, when they knew it, what they shared and whether the safeguards actually worked. A departmental review cannot answer those questions with the independence or public confidence they deserve. An inquiry that can open the original files and hear from witnesses can,” he said. The letter has also been copied to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

🤝 Working together for better health: The Health Deal Health Minister Robbie Butler has launched The Health Deal, a new partnership between the public and Health and Social Care, shaped by conversations with over 11,000 people across Northern Ireland. "I believe health is a social contract, and it must be something that is done with people, not to them." The HSC's part of the deal 👇 📅 Making it easier to get an appointment when you need one ⏳ Focusing on reducing waiting times across the system ❌ Making it easier to cancel appointments you no longer need, so they can be given to someone else 🚶 Making it easier to be more active and live a healthier lifestyle Your part 👇 💚 Taking whatever steps you can to look after yourself and the people in your life, like being more active and spending more time outside with those you care about "We've already spoken to over 11,000 people to help shape The Health Deal. But that's just the start."

🌹 As part of today's Act of Remembrance at Stormont, Party Leader Jon Burrows MLA and Deputy Leader Diana Armstrong MLA laid a wreath on behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party. We remember all those who served and gave their lives so that we might live in freedom. We will remember them. 🌹

Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader and Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Diana Armstrong has said the Blake review exposes a catalogue of contradictions and communication failures within DAERA. Diana Armstrong said: “Dr Blake has done a serious piece of work and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But read it. This was a shambles from start to finish and it is a damning indictment of how that Department operates. “The whole case for culling those animals in the fields rests on them being too wild to gather. Yet on the very morning of the operation, fifteen of them were standing in a shed waiting on paperwork. The keeper had gathered them weeks before for TB testing. Buyers had walked among them without causing alarm. Animals were moved off that farm on the day itself. Dr Blake sets every bit of that out in his report and still concludes they could not be gathered. Nobody has answered that, and it is the question the whole thing turns on. “Three animals were shot at Site 1 after the order to stop had already been given, and Dr Blake could not establish why. Site 2 was declared clear at lunchtime and, in his words, no search was carried out on Site 2. Sites 1 and 3 were searched extensively over two days. Site 2 was not searched once. Five days later a calf was found on a public road with a wound he describes as reflective of a gunshot, and he concludes it most likely came from Site 2. “With a bull loose on a public road and firearms in use, staff rang the PSNI at quarter past seven and again at half past and got no answer. Dr Blake points out that neither agreement between DAERA and the police even allows for that possibility. “But here is the bit that will stay with people. Two neighbours, distressed at what they were watching, tried to move the cow and calves onto their own ground because they wanted to buy them and save them. That was refused. The animals were driven back into the field and two of them were shot. “I visited a neighbouring farm last night. Three animals from that herd are alive there today, including the wounded calf, and nobody from the review ever contacted those people. They have had those animals since July and were never asked a single question about them. “I will be putting these points to the Minister this afternoon.”