Mr Compton stepped down as leader at the Health and Social Care Board in 2014 after 40 years of working in health care.Ambulance delays at backed-up emergency departments have been a major issue in the last week
The organisation, which arranged health and social care services, shut down last year, with its functions coming under the responsibility of the Department of Health. In 2011, his report, Transforming Your Care, spelled out major reform for Northern Ireland's health service., he said the political stalemate was creating a long-term deficit of services.
"We've had an assembly for two of the last six years, I mean that is fairly catastrophic for the health service because we are a tax-funded system that relies on political leadership," he said. "When you don't have political leadership, you don't get decisions and when you don't get decisions, then you get the outworkings of what you see today in our health service."