Member's statement: Social Care Workforce

Member's statement by Mrs Linda Dillon on 22 September 2026.

MLA: Mrs Linda Dillon
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
Date: 22 September 2026
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Social Care Workforce
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5739098

Text

I raise the growing pressure facing the social care workforce delivering care in our communities. Every day, those workers provide an invaluable service, looking after our older people and those with complex disabilities and providing vital support to their families. Their work allows thousands of people to remain independent, live with dignity and, importantly, remain safely in their own homes. As we seek to reform our Health and Social Care system and provide more care closer to home, that workforce will become ever more important, yet social care workers are among the lowest-paid workers in that system, with no indication of when they will get the real living wage that the Minister has promised them. Yesterday, we heard in news reports that the price of diesel has risen to over £2 a litre. That is beyond the means of most carers in the community, particularly in rural areas such as mine in Mid Ulster. People are suffering because of the reckless actions of Donald Trump in joining Israel in launching its war against Iran. That has had consequences for workers and families here.
Those consequences are particularly acute for some of our lowest-paid social care workers, who have no choice but to use their cars to travel between the homes of the people whom they support. While those workers are being asked to absorb higher costs, we must ensure that energy and oil companies are not allowed to use instability in global markets as an opportunity to protect or increase profits at the expense of ordinary people.
When prices rise, it cannot always be workers and families who are expected to carry that burden. There must be transparency on how increases are passed on at the pumps, and the British Government must ensure that global instability is not used to justify excessive or unfair increases at the pumps. Our MLA Declan Kearney has been clear in his statement today about the news that oil companies have quadrupled their profits. We are talking about billions of pounds: what a difference that could make across the world in tackling poverty. It is grotesque that, at a time when they are making those kinds of profits, our care workers are struggling to provide care to the most vulnerable. The irony of listening to the news this morning was to hear that the British Government's solution to assisting in the instability of access to fuel is to refuel war planes for Saudi Arabia. They cannot help to put fuel into the cars of care workers but can provide fuel for war planes. That just shows that it is policy. The Health Minister needs to give an update on the introduction of the real living wage for the independent social care workforce and what measures he is considering to address increased fuel and travel costs for staff delivering care in our communities. It is not always about more money. Sometimes, it is about how we use the resources that we have. The Health Minister, like the rest of us, knows well —
— that the cost of keeping people in hospital is astronomical.

518 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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