By Niall Deeney

Copyright belfastlive

The cause of an IT fault in a Northern Ireland health Trust that meant ambulances had to be diverted and operations cancelled is still to be fully determined. Health Minister Mike Nesbitt said a “root cause analysis of the reasons for the outage” is now underway, after computer systems failed in the Southern Trust last week. The systems went down on Septmber 17, forcing health bosses to divert ambulances fto “other Trust emergency departments” and postpone “elective activity”. Mr Nesbitt had been asked for an update on the outage in a priority written question by the SDLP MLA Justin McNulty. Mr McNulty had written to the Minister to ask “for an update on the IT Outage in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust on 17 September 2025; for his assessment of the impact of the outage on patients’ health and wellbeing; and (iii) how his Department is moving to reassure patients and staff that it will not happen again.” Mr Nesbitt replied: “In accordance with my Written Ministerial Statement of 19 September, I reiterate that Southern Health and Social Care Trust experienced an operational IT outage on the morning of 17 September. The issue was isolated to the Southern Trust but impacted across their sites and there is no suggestion that this was a cyber related matter. The outage led to a loss of the computer network via 2 data centres which prevented access to key systems across the Trust. “The resultant impact necessitated the postponement of elective activity on 17 and 18 September and the diversion of ambulances to other Trust emergency departments throughout 17 September. Community Services were impacted to a lesser extent. “Both impacted data centres were restored by 5pm on 17 September, providing access in the first instance to priority systems relating to labs, EDs, ICU and night medicines, which allowed both Daisy Hill and Craigavon Area Hospitals to recommence receipt of ambulance arrivals from 9pm and 10.30pm respectively.” He continued: “The Trust are working at pace to rebook postponed appointments and procedures as soon as possible and my Department will support this prompt rebooking via waiting list funding if required. Initial unverified data indicates approximately 1,600 patients were impacted by postponements. It should be noted that there were no postponements beyond the 17 and 18 September and Adult Community Clinics were not impacted during the major incident timeframe. The major incident was formally stood down the morning of 18 September 2025, however recovery efforts will continue for some time.” The Health Minister added: “As with any major incident, the HSC has a process to understand the cause and impact, and to identify any learning or rectifications to prevent a recurrence. To this end, I can confirm that a root cause analysis of the reasons for the outage is underway. My Department will oversee the recovery and learning processes associated with this major incident.” For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.