Nicola Grant Workers Party representative has reacted to the new health department chiefs warning of the serious short fall in the health budget ,saying the health minister and the Executive parties, promised health service staff in Northern Ireland, that they would have pay parity .The prospect of £300 million in cuts across health trusts on top of the pay awards leaves Northern Ireland facing a budget cut of nearly 8% of the total health budgets higher than any other regions of the UK.
Nicola continued budget cuts of that amount cannot be achieved without further damaging patient outcomes. The waiting lists and the financial allocation has not been used to build and ease in house ability to tackle the backlog. But has instead been used to pay the private sector, who deplete medical staff in the NHS. The Workers Party has called on the Executive parties to ensure that this latest budgetary crisis is not used to pit dedicated staff against patients and service users’ medical needs and treatments.
Nicola finished by saying that staff and patients should not be allowed to suffer because of earlier decisions and mismanagement of resources. What is now needed is an open and transparent inclusive discussion on the delivery of high-quality clinical outcomes for all our citizens and a commitment to the core values of the NHS that can tackle the decades of health inequalities and the indifference and neglect that created them.
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