IT seems that hardly a week now goes by without some further evidence of the intense financial and staffing pressures stifling our public services.
The latest to demonstrate their frustration and resort to strike action are hundreds of staff in the Veterinary Service Animal Health Group in the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs who are based at meat processing plants and ports in Belfast, Larne and Warrenpoint.
These may be largely unheralded roles when compared to, for example, the nurses and doctors who are also in industrial dispute with the government. However, we should be in no doubt that they fulfil a vital role in keeping the food we eat safe, protecting the health and welfare of animals and helping to keep the important agri-food industry's supply chains running smoothly.
Pay is the central factor. This is an echo of the message sent by health and social care staff, college lecturers and school teachers, to name just some of those pressing the government for better, fairer wages.
According to the trade union Nipsa, this week's strike action is in protest at a pay award of £552 given to all Northern Ireland civil servants for 2022-23 – a drop in the ocean when inflation was above 10% and remains stubbornly high.
Inflation has crashed, in real terms, everyone's take-home pay. Factor in a steep rise in the cost-of-living – food, fuel and energy in particular are significantly more expensive today than they were several years ago – and secretary of state Chris Heaton-Harris's so-called punishment budget, and we are left facing into singularly daunting and challenging headwinds. Needless to say, the DUP's self-serving Stormont boycott severely amplifies the difficulties.
Nipsa general secretary Carmel Gates said Mr Heaton-Harris had refused to engage on the latest pay dispute and the development of a "hard 'pay border'" in the Irish Sea. His pro forma approach to these matters has been to say that it is for a locally-elected executive to sort them out, though he is noticeably less forthcoming about how he expects this to happen when there is no executive.
Caught in the middle are farmers who would have fully intended to send cattle to abattoirs this week, at a time when supplies are ramping up to meet Christmas demand.
It is another example of how the collision between Tory austerity and DUP intransigence is harming Northern Ireland and its people.
