Nurses could be “on the streets by mid-November” taking strike action unless a pay deal for healthcare workers is implemented, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has warned.
In May the minister signed off £200m to go towards this year’s pay deal but said the money would need to be found outside his department due to financial pressures he is already facing.
Health pay is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland. In recent years health workers have gone on strike to fight for pay parity with their colleagues in the rest of the UK.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Northern Ireland has already lodged a formal dispute over failure to implement this year’s pay award for its staff.
Speaking in the assembly on Monday, SDLP assembly member Colin McGrath accused the Finance Minister John O’Dowd of “washing his hands” of the issue.
Nesbitt replied that he does “not see a fix for this issue outside of the executive working together collaboratively” and that he would not point the finger at other ministers for the failure so far to find the money.
But he added: “The pressures on health are absolutely unprecedented, we have £614m of a funding gap – £200m of that is for nurses’ pay.”
He said that a number of weeks ago he met RCN NI staff who “made it very clear they have had enough”.
The minister added that if the union votes to go on strike this time, there would be “no derogations or mitigations”.
“So unless something changes, I’m afraid we have to anticipate that nurses will be on the streets by mid-November, and what that does to the waiting list initiative, the programme for government priorities and health and social care delivery is just massive.”
Northern Ireland nurses have yet to receive the pay award for this financial year – 2025 to 2026 – that their counterparts elsewhere in the UK expect to receive in their August pay.
Nurses were offered a proposed pay award of 3.6%, but RCN members have rejected this offer, with 80% of those who took part in a ballot saying it was not enough.
In what has been described as the largest pay consultation ever run by the health union, 51% of its members participated in the vote and overwhelmingly rejected the offer.
The RCN NI is now in a formal trade dispute with the Northern Ireland Executive, Department of Health and health and social care employers.
