Nurses in Northern Ireland will not receive the same pay award as their colleagues in other UK countries this year, the government there has confirmed.
Health and Social Care (HSC) staff are expected to fall out of pay parity with their UK counterparts once again, due to budget constraints.
“It will be for our members to determine how they wish to pursue fair pay if these reports prove to be correct”
Rita Devlin
Health unions have warned that strike action could take place if the situation is not resolved promptly.
The latest Northern Ireland budgetary position means the health minister, Mike Nesbitt, has said he is not able to deliver a 5.5% pay settlement for HSC staff for 2024-25.
This is despite nurses and other NHS staff in England, Scotland and Wales all being given that uplift for this year.
At the start of this month, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves handed the Northern Ireland executive £1.5bn in Barnett consequentials for 2025-26 and an additional £640m in Barnett consequentials for the current financial year.
The executive this week allocated £350m of these Barnett consequentials to the Department of Health to help this year, as part of a budget reallocation exercise called a monitoring round.
The department confirmed to Nursing Times that, despite this cash injection, it would still not be able to match the pay awards received across the rest of the UK.
Ahead of the monitoring round, the department identified financial pressures totalling £450m, including £320m to implement the 5.5% pay increase for HSC staff.
The remaining £130m was a budget deficit, representing a gap between available funding and the cost of maintaining core health and social care services at current levels.
The department explained that while £350m in extra Barnett funding for this year was a significant sum, it “still left a remaining funding gap of £100m”.
A spokesperson for the department said: “As feared, it has not been possible to fully bridge the funding deficit for health that was publicly identified by the department following the 2024-25 budget.
“This is despite over £200m in savings across the Health and Social Care system and in-year allocations from the executive.
“The remaining £100m gap means the minister and department are not in a position to match in full the pay awards made to health staff in England and Wales for this year.
“The minister has expressed his deep dissatisfaction with this position and recognises the justifiable frustration that the HSC workforce will feel.”
The department confirmed that Mr Nesbitt had sought an early meeting with health trade unions to discuss pay offers for 2024-25.
Nursing Times understands that this meeting will take place on Thursday 14 November.
Responding to the news, the Royal College of Nursing Northern Ireland director, Rita Devlin, said: “Nursing staff in Northern Ireland are dismayed and disillusioned at the prospect of receiving a pay award that does not match that made to their colleagues and counterparts across the UK.
“We are about to enter the winter months when the already intolerable pressures on the health and social care system will increase to breaking point.
Rita Devlin
“It is unthinkable that we could enter this period with a demoralised and disillusioned workforce who feel, yet again, that they are not valued by our politicians.”
Ms Devlin noted that the New Decade, New Approach agreement, which restored the Northern Ireland executive in 2020, had promised that the country would never fall out of pay parity again with its UK counterparts.
However, she warned that Northern Ireland was once again “on the brink of that becoming a reality”.
Historically, nurses in Northern Ireland have been the last in the UK to receive annual pay increases.
In previous years, the delays have led to strike action by nurses and other healthcare workers in the country.
Ms Devlin added: “It will be for our members to determine how they wish to pursue fair pay if these reports prove to be correct, but all our politicians are aware of the previous history of strike action when Northern Ireland nurses were detached from pay parity with the rest of the UK.”
Meanwhile, Unison Northern Ireland head of bargaining and representation, Anne Speed, told Nursing Times that nurse members and their HSC colleagues were “increasingly frustrated and concerned” by the lengthy delay in providing a pay award.
She said: “Workers across health and social care will have seen their colleagues in the NHS across England, Scotland and Wales receive a 5.5% uplift as recommended by the pay review body and are rightly demanding no less.”
Ms Speed said unions would make it clear to Mr Nesbitt and other executive ministers that “they must act urgently to secure the funding needed to maintain pay parity”.
She added: “Unison members have had to take sustained industrial action twice in the last several years to protect pay parity.
“The health and social care workforce should not be forced once again into this position to secure the pay award they need.’’
More on nurse pay in Northern Ireland
