The Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland has launched a formal pay dispute over a “failure” to award their latest pay increase.
A statement from the RCN said the “continuing absence” of the 3.6% pay award for 2025-26 was insulting.
Lodging the complaint with the Stormont Executive, the Department of Health and HSC employers, the union said members “are not prepared to tolerate a repetition” of delays over the past two years compared to other UK regions.
Professor Rita Devlin, RCN Northern Ireland executive director said: “Nursing and other health care staff in Northern Ireland are once again on the brink of stepping out of pay parity with colleagues across the UK.
“We have worked tirelessly to try and ensure that this does not happen again but there has been a failure in some political quarters to listen.”
She continued: “Our members do not understand why, yet again, they are being treated by their own Executive as second-class citizens and why, every year, the need to formulate a modest pay offer appears to catch the Executive unprepared.
“The issue of pay should be accounted for in every year’s budget and a failure to do this is a failure of government.
“Without staff there is simply no health service, and we are at an absolute loss to explain this attitude towards nursing staff who are the largest professional group in the health service.
“As our recent pay consultation has shown, nursing staff in Northern Ireland and across the UK, don’t believe a 3.6% pay rise is enough, but to not even get that is an insult.”
Responding, health minister Mike Nesbitt said she shared the RCN’s frustration.
“In May, I announced that I was triggering the Ministerial Direction process to achieve delivery of these pay increases as soon as possible. That reflected my commitment to maintaining pay parity with England,” he said.
“In line with the Ministerial Direction process, my decision was referred to the wider Executive. Unfortunately, that’s where it still sits.
“Our health workers deserve so much better.
“I note that the RCN is today saying that the ‘first step must be for the Northern Ireland Executive to deliver the long-overdue pay award for this year.’
“I couldn’t agree more.”
In his May statement, Mr Nesbitt had said he did not want health workers to be “demoralised” by another year of uncertainty on pay.
“They deserve better than that. This is about treating with respect the people who keep us healthy, fix us when we are broken and keep us alive when death becomes a potential outcome.
“Falling behind pay levels across the water will also exacerbate challenges with recruitment and retention of health service staff.”
He said that pay parity with England was a hard-fought principle he intended to maintain, noting failure to do so would “undoubtedly lead to industrial action.”
“In short, the risk of a potential budget overspend must be balanced against the significant risk to service provision.”