{"id":307016,"date":"2025-07-31T16:28:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T16:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307016\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T16:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T16:28:15","slug":"nis-royal-college-of-nursing-launches-formal-pay-dispute-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307016\/","title":{"rendered":"NI\u2019s Royal College of Nursing launches formal pay dispute \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland has launched a formal pay dispute over a \u201cfailure\u201d to award their latest pay increase.<\/p>\n

A statement from the RCN said the \u201ccontinuing absence\u201d of the 3.6% pay award for 2025-26 was insulting. <\/p>\n

Lodging the complaint with the Stormont Executive, the Department of Health and HSC employers, the union said members \u201care not prepared to tolerate a repetition\u201d of delays over the past two years compared to other UK regions.<\/p>\n

Professor Rita Devlin, RCN Northern Ireland executive director said: \u201cNursing 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. <\/p>\n

\"Miami<\/a>\"‘Lengthy<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cOur 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue of pay should be accounted for in every year\u2019s budget and a failure to do this is a failure of government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs our recent pay consultation has shown, nursing staff in Northern Ireland and across the UK, don\u2019t believe a 3.6% pay rise is enough, but to not even get that is an insult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding, health minister Mike Nesbitt said she shared the RCN\u2019s frustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn line with the Ministerial Direction process, my decision was referred to the wider Executive. Unfortunately, that\u2019s where it still sits.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur health workers deserve so much better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI note that the RCN is today saying that the \u2018first step must be for the Northern Ireland Executive to deliver the long-overdue pay award for this year.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t agree more.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his May statement, Mr Nesbitt had said he did not want health workers to be \u201cdemoralised\u201d by another year of uncertainty on pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFalling behind pay levels across the water will also exacerbate challenges with recruitment and retention of health service staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that pay parity with England was a hard-fought principle he intended to maintain, noting failure to do so would \u201cundoubtedly lead to industrial action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, the risk of a potential budget overspend must be balanced against the significant risk to service provision.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland has launched a formal pay dispute over a \u201cfailure\u201d to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[23523,1144,24600,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-307016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-health-and-social-care","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-rcn","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114948794590184639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}