Senior staff from all of Northern Ireland’s health trusts have urged that a resolution be found on pay parity for workers to avert any potential industrial action this winter.
Outlining the situation ahead of winter, they warned that demand continues to outstrip capacity in almost every area, and also voiced concern about haemorrhaging staff across the border to the Irish Republic due to pay levels.
Health worker unions remain in negotiation over achieving pay parity, and are considering a proposal by Health Minister Mike Nesbitt of a two-stage process to deliver a recommended pay rise amid pressures on his budget allocation.
However the unions have warned that potential industrial action is not off the table.
The leaders of the five health trusts and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service appeared before the Stormont Health Committee on Thursday, and stressed it is imperative that industrial action is avoided.
Presenting opening remarks on behalf of all the trusts, South Eastern Health Trust chief executive Roisin Coulter said their two biggest issues remain finance and resource availability.
She paid tribute to staff for keeping services running “in the most challenging of circumstances”.
“Our staff find themselves in an environment where nearly in all areas demand is outstripping capacity, that is what is driving the increase in waiting lists in secondary care, the increasing number of unmet packages in social care and the pressures experienced by our GP colleagues in primary care,” she said.
“We must support our staff to deliver services and we must resolve the pay issues and ensure that health and social care in Northern Ireland is an attractive place where people come and work.”
She highlighted a number of initiatives to address waiting lists but said after years of being asked to make savings, all the trusts have accumulated significant underlying recurrent deficits and are facing increasing demand.
“Addressing current waiting lists will require many hundreds of millions of pounds for additional staffing and infrastructure over several years, and even then we will rely on considerable support from the independent sector,” she told MLAs.
“But even if we address the backlog, if we do not build the extra recurrent capacity alongside service reform and efficiency, those waiting times will continue to be an issue into the future.”
Western Trust chief executive Neil Guckian said they cannot overstate the importance of the pay award.
“We are working in an incredibly competitive work place, we have an opportunity to be the first year since 2018 where we could have a winter without either industrial action or a pandemic, so I would really ask everyone to use all their efforts,” he told MLAs.
“The Republic of Ireland are paying significantly more than Northern Ireland for health and social care workers… we are haemorrhaging staff across the border.
“So we really cannot overstate the importance of a pay award, and industrial action will pull our services down during the winter, we cannot allow ourselves to get into that position.”
Ms Coulter added that it is “absolutely imperative that we avoid staff having to take industrial action”.
“In our sector the impact, particularly in winter, is in terms of availability to respond in terms of emergency pressures, pressures across Emergency Departments, increased overcrowding in Emergency Departments, the inability to put up more beds in acute hospitals, our community response services in terms of supporting families at home. It is right across, end to end.
“There is the other piece about morale… people who have given their career to training to become a professional, working as part of a team supporting one and other. Staff do not want to go on strike in the health service, they absolutely do not. They want to come to work every single day and provide the highest quality of care as we all do.
“It is really imperative that we all work together and ask for the wider Executive to really look at how we can avoid industrial action and ensure that staff do receive that pay parity.”
Michael Bloomfield, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, said they support the right of their staff to take industrial action, describing it as “unthinkable that pay parity would not continue”.
“We are hopeful that those current discussions will lead to a successful outcome,” he said.
“We know that our staff do not want to be in industrial action, they do not want to be on strike, they know the community need their service, and they want to provide it, but they are in that difficult position.
“If we go to full strike action, there is undoubtedly a huge impact on service users and it must be prevented.”