In 2019, RCN nurses in Northern Ireland staged their first strike over pay and conditions in the union’s 103-year history.
Four years later and after working through the pandemic, the RCN’s NI director Rita Devlin said it is a sad state of affairs that nurses are considering fresh strikes.
Reflecting on 75 years of the NHS, she repeated calls for Stormont and Westminster leaders to increase their support.
“The NHS has provided healthcare free at the point of delivery since 1948 and has been a vital part of all our lives from cradle to grave,” she told The Irish News.
“For those of us who work in it or have worked in it, it has a very special place.
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“Nursing staff are the single largest professional group in the NHS and this anniversary is an opportunity to recognise and celebrate all that we have achieved, individually and collectively, as well as the huge impact nursing staff have on people’s lives.”
After health workers have worked “tirelessly” through the pandemic to care for the most vulnerable in society,” she said the NHS was now facing one of its biggest ever challenges.
“In Northern Ireland our nursing staff have fallen out of pay parity with colleagues in England and Wales and we are struggling with safe staffing issues as well as an inability to implement much needed transformation due to the political situation,” she said.
“We are really concerned about what the future holds if we cannot get these issues addressed quickly.
“In 2019, RCN members in Northern Ireland were the first in the UK to take strike action to address the issues of pay parity and safe staffing. We did not think we would be back in the same situation less than four years later with the prospect of having to go back on the picket lines again.”
With huge changes to the NHS over the past 30 years, she said there was no doubt that nurses would play an even more important role in the NHS in the future.
“More and more services are nurse-led and that will increase as service models change and develop. The NHS is in greater demand than ever before.
“If we are to preserve its future, we must ensure that we protect and develop what we have and act to solve some of the serious challenges we are facing. However, we will need political backing to be able to do that.”
