For the first time, consultants and specialist, associate specialist and specialty doctors in Northern Ireland will go on strike today because of pay.
The 24-hour strike takes the form of Christmas Day cover, which means most routine or elective work will be cancelled but emergencies will be treated and runs from 7am today until 6.59am tomorrow.
Representatives of the Northern Ireland BMA consultants and SAS doctors’ committees will go to Stormont around lunchtime to meet the chair and deputy chair of the health committee to discuss the dispute.
Leanne Davison, chair of the BMA Northern Ireland specialist, associate specialist and specialty doctor committee, said that the Northern Ireland executive could have stopped the strike but had chosen not to.
‘Our health service can no longer run on the goodwill of frontline staff. Doctors are choosing to leave the health service or to reduce their contracted hours due to continued pay erosion and we can see the outworkings of this in services having to close due to staffing shortages.
‘Those with the power to change this have so far chosen not to, which has forced hospital doctors into the unacceptable position of taking strike action in order to be heard. But it is not too late. We again call on government to step in and resolve this dispute with a credible offer to avert strike action without delay.’
FARREN: Secondary care doctors are angry
David Farren, chair of the BMA Northern Ireland consultants committee, said no doctor wanted to take strike action. ‘However, there is a palpable sense of anger among all secondary care doctors at years of significant pay erosion in return for trying to deliver care in an overstretched health system where their jobs have become more complex and pressured.
‘Add in the now annual uncertainty over late pay awards while our colleagues elsewhere in the UK are paid on time, along with the more lucrative contracts offered in the Republic of Ireland, and you create a hugely demoralising effect on doctors working in Northern Ireland.’
Consultants and SAS doctors in Northern voted strongly in favour of strike action following 18 years of pay erosion. Resident doctors are also due to go out on strike on Monday for 24 hours.