Health Trade Unions acknowledge today's announcement from the Health Minister that the NI Executive has agreed that the Department of Health can proceed to allocate the funding required to restore pay parity in 2025/26.
We recognise that this moves the issue of pay in the right direction, reflecting the repeated demands made by our collective membership that the commitment to pay parity must be honoured.
We will now need detailed discussions with the minister and officials on next steps following this movement on funding. We remain very mindful that the movement on funding has happened after the link to pay parity has already been broken and after several unions expressed their intention to ballot members for industrial action. Unacceptable delays in addressing pay that have been repeatedly experienced over recent years must be dealt with moving forward.
We are also very mindful of the particularly difficult position faced by the lowest paid within our health service, with many paid the minimum wage. We will continue to press the case that low pay must be comprehensively dealt with through actions such as the health service moving towards the real Living Wage.