Stormont Health Minister ‘shares concerns’ around upcoming Budget

Stormont Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has said he shares the concerns of MLAs ahead of this week’s Budget announcement.

At the weekend, Northern Ireland’s Finance Minister John O’Dowd warned of difficult decisions ahead to tackle challenges facing frontline public services.

The Department of Health receives the biggest allocation from the Stormont funding pot.

However, it was unable to meet the cost of staff pay increases this year.

During questions for his department at the Assembly on Monday, Mr Nesbitt was challenged by SDLP MLA Colin McGrath around the £100 million still to be found for health and social care staff pay.

Mr Nesbitt responded saying he has not asked the Stormont Executive to overspend, and dip into next year’s budget, but that he asked it to endorse his ministerial directive to pay the health workforce.

He said this has created a pressure of £209 million.

“I’m being promised up to £100 million from December Monitoring Round, that leaves potentially at least £109 million to be found,” he told MLAs.

“We have not finished trying to find savings this year. We will continue until March 31 to try and find savings, but it is reasonable to assume when we get to March 31, we will not have balanced our budget, and that is a very serious thing.

“I never wanted to stand here as a minister and preside over a budget that was broken. But it’s better that we pay the doctors, the nurses, the allied health professionals, the workforce, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Mr Nesbitt added the situation would be perilous if the health service is not reformed, and said work is under way.

“I share the members’ concern about next year’s budget, but we don’t yet know where we’re going to end up this year,” he said.

“We don’t yet know what next year’s budget is going to be, and we don’t yet know how quickly we’ll be able to roll out the neighbourhood model.

“But I hope everybody’s on the starting line for April 1. For some, and for some processes, there’ll be a question of a 100-metre sprint, others will be doing the 5k, some will be doing 10k, and some might even be doing the marathon to get there.”

Earlier Mr Nesbitt also told MLAs that his first action when he receives his next budget allocation will be to ringfence funding for staff pay.

“Once we know what our budget is for next year, the first action will be to ringfence for pay, because I don’t want what has happened this year and what happened last year and what has happened previously to ever, ever happen again,” he said.

“And I believe if I do that this year, and of course, personally, I do it this time next year, then I will set a precedent that no future health minister will feel other than compelled to follow in future years.

“After the pay comes the transformation, because you can spend money on waiting lists, and it’s right that we are and we are bringing them down, but if that’s all you do, then once the money’s spent, the lists go back up again.

“So we have to do the transformation in tandem with tackling the lists.”