The Northern Ireland Executive has announced that the Department of Health can allocate the funding required to restore pay parity in 2025/26 for health and social care staff.
The health minister has confirmed that as per the Agenda for Change, the pay rise will be 3.6% and back dated to 1 April. The workers, who have made repeated demands for a commitment to pay parity, will receive this in their February 2026 pay packets.
Health minister Mike Nesbitt said: “The Executive has given me approval to deliver pay parity for health service staff, which was our original intention, and what unions and professional bodies have been asking for and is their right. This would restore pay parity with the percentage uplifts as recommended by pay review bodies being back dated in full.
“In addition, and to ensure that issue of late payment of pay awards will never happen again, I can confirm that as Health Minister I am committed to ensuring future pay awards are prioritised in my budget allocation at the start of the financial year and adjusted as necessary to ensure parity.”
Alan Perry, senior organiser at GMB, added: “This looks like a massive step forward for Northern Ireland’s health workers to have pay parity with employees across Great Britain. We must say it is hugely disappointing that it’s taken so long to resolve this. We sincerely hope lessons have been learnt and pay will be prioritised in next year’s budgeting process.”
Kevin Kelly, assistant secretary at NIPSA, said: “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 forwards.
“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.”
