In a dispute that has stirred deep emotions across the north coast, East Londonderry DUP MLA Maurice Bradley has pushed back firmly against claims that concerns about the future of Causeway Hospital are nothing more than “disinformation.” The disagreement centers on a proposal by the Northern Health Trust to remove Emergency General Surgery (EGS) from the Coleraine hospital, a move that would mean patients needing urgent surgical care would instead be taken to Antrim Area Hospital, nearly forty miles away. Bradley’s comments come just before a meeting of Causeway Coast and Glens Council on September 1, where a motion tabled by DUP councillors Darryl Wilson and Tanya Elder will call on the Health Minister to overturn the Trust’s recommendation. For many local people, this is not an abstract policy debate. It is about whether their loved ones, especially older relatives, farmers, and families living in remote areas, can get life-saving treatment quickly enough in an emergency. The emotional weight of the issue is clear in the language being used by both sides, and Bradley’s latest statement reflects a determination to ensure that the voices of ordinary residents are not drowned out by official assurances or dismissed as uninformed scaremongering.
The row intensified after two Alliance representatives, Councillor Lee Kane and Alderman Yvonne Boyle, argued that people on the north coast “deserve better than disinformation” and urged the public to trust clinical expertise. Kane said health experts believe consolidating emergency general surgery at Antrim Area Hospital is in the best interest of patients, and that decisions should be based on clinical evidence rather than “disinformation from political representatives who are prioritising likes on social media over the safety of our constituents.” Boyle similarly challenged claims that Causeway Hospital is being run down, calling the motion a vehicle for myths that “do not stand up to scrutiny.” Bradley responded with a sharp rebuttal, saying that Kane and Boyle are entitled to support the Trust’s proposal, but they are not entitled to dismiss legitimate questions about patient safety, capacity, rural access, and staffing as disinformation. He reminded his critics that his interest in Causeway Hospital predates the current consultation and social media by many years, listing the successive Trust administrators he has challenged since the days of Sean Donaghy, through Tony Stevens, Jennifer Welsh, and now Suzanne Pullins. His record, he insisted, includes meetings, Assembly questions, correspondence, and direct representations to multiple Health Ministers. To characterize that long history of scrutiny as a recent attempt to win online approval was, in his words, “both inaccurate and insulting.” It was a deeply personal moment in an already charged debate, and it underscored how much this issue means to those who have been fighting for the hospital for years.
Bradley argued that the strongest rebuttal to the Alliance statements is found in the Northern Trust’s own consultation report. The Trust received 1,415 responses, and when asked whether they agreed with the preferred option of centralising Emergency General Surgery and major colorectal surgery at Antrim, only 21 people said yes. A staggering 1,362 said no. Even the Trust itself acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of respondents did not support its proposal. The Rural Needs Impact Assessment produced similarly lopsided results, with just 22 respondents agreeing with its conclusions while 1,323 disagreed. Bradley pointed out that these respondents were not “self-appointed experts” or people with a political agenda. They were patients, healthcare workers, families, rural residents, and individuals who had personally experienced emergency surgical care at Causeway. Their views, he said, deserve to be taken seriously. To accuse elected representatives of spreading disinformation while ignoring the clearly expressed views of the public is, in his words, extraordinary. The consultation numbers are difficult to argue with. They show a community that is overwhelmingly opposed to losing a service it values and trusts. For Bradley, dismissing that opposition as uninformed or malicious is not just disrespectful to the thousands who took the time to respond; it is also a refusal to engage with the reality of life on the north coast, where distance, road quality, and ambulance availability are matters of life and death.
Bradley was careful to acknowledge that investment in Causeway has happened, and he welcomed it. He praised the new MRI scanner, the £1.8 million investment in ambulatory care, and the recruitment of consultants, Specialty Doctors, and Advanced Nurse Practitioners. He has consistently supported such investment, he said. But he argued that these welcome improvements cannot be used to hide the loss of a core acute service. An MRI scanner, however valuable, does not answer the question of whether it is safe to remove inpatient Emergency General Surgery. Investment in ambulatory or elective care cannot replace the ability to admit and operate on an emergency surgical patient at Causeway. The Trust’s own documents, he noted, state clearly that patients requiring urgent surgical intervention or admission to a surgical inpatient bed will be transferred to Antrim. That is not a myth; it is the proposed model. The Trust estimates that two or three patients each day will require transfer from Causeway to Antrim, with about one-third needing a Northern Ireland Ambulance Service paramedic crew. Bradley stressed that the Trust itself has acknowledged existing pressures at Antrim Area Hospital. More importantly, its consultation report admits that the proposed measures will not resolve Antrim’s underlying capacity problems. This is why he has repeatedly asked for detailed bed, theatre, workforce, ambulance, and financial modelling to be published. Before services are removed from Causeway, the public deserves to know exactly where these patients will be accommodated, how quickly an ambulance will be available, what will happen when Antrim is operating beyond capacity, and what contingency exists when an unstable patient cannot safely withstand the journey. Assurances, he said, are not a substitute for independently tested evidence.
The recruitment data supplied by the Trust also raises legitimate questions, according to Bradley. Figures covering April 2023 to July 2026 recorded 2,194 vacancy notifications associated with Antrim, compared with 708 at Causeway. In the medical, dental, and senior executive categories, the numbers were 190 and 71 respectively. Bradley conceded that these figures alone cannot prove underinvestment or explain why each vacancy arose. But they certainly do not justify the Alliance’s claim that it is “categorically untrue” that removing acute services could affect future recruitment and retention. In fact, the Trust’s consultation report itself records concerns that removing Emergency General Surgery could make Causeway less attractive to doctors and nurses. That concern, he said, deserves a proper evidence-based answer, not a political dismissal. He also highlighted the report’s acknowledgment of distance, ambulance availability, and rural inequality. Causeway is almost forty miles from Antrim, and the journey from Coleraine can take more than an hour. The report identifies 83,642 residents living in settlements more than thirty minutes from Antrim, and a further 155,813 people living in hamlets or open countryside who were not even included in that percentage calculation. These are real people, Bradley said, not statistics to be brushed aside. Older residents, farming families, people without private transport, and communities across the north coast and Glens deserve the same consideration as those living closer to Greater Belfast. Behind the numbers are stories of people who worry what will happen if they or their neighbours fall suddenly ill in the middle of the night, far from the nearest major hospital.
In his closing remarks, Bradley sought to frame the debate as one about transparency, fairness, and respect. He said he respects clinical opinion and has never suggested that services should remain unchanged regardless of patient safety. But invoking unnamed “health experts” does not end legitimate democratic scrutiny. If senior clinicians have concluded that only the Antrim option is safe, then the full evidence supporting that conclusion should be published, including underlying workforce assumptions, capacity modelling, transfer-risk assessment, dissenting clinical opinions, and a properly costed comparison with retaining and strengthening Emergency General Surgery at Causeway. He noted that the Trust’s original options appraisal actually included centralising Emergency General Surgery and major colorectal surgery at Causeway, and the public is entitled to see why that option was rejected while the existing absence of a funded 24/7 emergency theatre was later used as a reason to favour Antrim. The absence of previous investment, he argued, must not become the justification for further removal of services. Bradley concluded by calling for a respectful debate based on evidence. Branding local representatives and concerned residents as peddlers of disinformation does nothing to answer the serious questions before the community. He will continue to support genuine health transformation, but transformation must be demonstrably safe, properly funded, and fair to rural communities. Until the workforce, capacity, transfer, and financial evidence has been fully published and independently scrutinised, he will continue to ask the Health Minister to pause the proposal and examine a properly resourced Causeway alternative. The people of the Causeway Coast do deserve better, he said. They deserve answers.