Health workers in Northern Ireland will not get a pay increase this year unless further funding is secured, a senior civil servant has said.
Department of Health permanent secretary Peter May, who is running the region’s under-pressure health service in the absence of devolved ministers, said replicating pay awards made to NHS staff in England could only be delivered by making “unprecedented” cuts.
He said he did not have the authority to make cutbacks that, he said, would have “severe and lasting implications” for health and social care services.
