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IHRD-9

Leadership Development

Hyponatraemia Inquiry · Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths · Issued 31 January 2018 · Addressed to: Northern Ireland Executive, Department of Health NI

Government responseDepartment of Health NI: Accepted (Mar 2021)

DeliveryDepartment of Health (Northern Ireland) says completed (Jun 2023)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

The highest priority should be accorded the development and improvement of leadership skills at every level of the health service including both executive and non-executive Board members.

Hyponatraemia Inquiry, Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths · 31 Jan 2018 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In June 2023, the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) recorded this recommendation on leadership development as completed, placing it under a table heading designating Phase 1 recommendations as "ACTIONED" (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Jun 2023). In that June 2023 document, the department applied the heading collectively across 66 actions together rather than providing an individual progress assessment for this measure (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Jun 2023).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

About this summary
This recommendation asks for cultural or behavioural change, which is difficult to verify from published sources alone. The record above reflects policy commitments rather than measured outcomes.

Report-level response context

The Minister of Health accepted all 96 recommendations together, in one sentence of a written statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 25 March 2021. That sentence is not a response to any one recommendation alone, and the Department of Health published no response to each recommendation. The Department's statements of 31 January, 2 February and 30 March 2018 contain no acceptance of the recommendations.

Government response

●Department of Health NI · Accepted · 25 Mar 2021

Words of: Mr Swann, Minister of Health, written ministerial statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly, 25 March 2021

My Department accepts the recommendations of the O'Hara Report in their entirety.

Extract from: Department of Health - Inquiry into Hyponatraemia Related Deaths (IHRD) Implementation Programme Update

Delivery

●Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says completed · 19 Jun 2023

IHRD Phase 1 Recommendations – ACTIONED

From: IHRD Recommendations Phase 1 & Phase 2 (Updated June 2023)

Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.

Site note: This is the heading of a table in the Department of Health's June 2023 list of the recommendations. It covers all 66 actions in that table together. It is the Department's table heading, not a statement about this recommendation alone. In October 2022 the Department also said that "full implementation of the 96 recommendations is by no means complete", which refers to the programme as a whole.

The tracker describes this as a long-term recommendation: systemic or cultural, with no single completion point.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.