Debate contribution: Health and Social Care Pay Awards 2025-26
Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on .
- MLA
- Mr Gerry Carroll
- Party at the time
- People Before Profit Alliance
- Date
- 23 September 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Health and Social Care Pay Awards 2025-26
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5129857
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will respond to some of the comments and address some of the issues. I will not have a chance to summarise everything, but I am sure that the Member who closes will. Philip McGuigan, the Chair of the Health Committee, referred to his support of the RCN in 2019 when he was first appointed as an MLA. He took strike action then, and he vowed to stand with it again if it decides to take strike action. He blamed the issue of low pay and pay inequality solely on Westminster, without mentioning the fact that the Stormont Executive and his party colleagues are responsible, alongside other Ministers. He went on to criticise the Health Minister. It is not my job to defend the Health Minister, but it is interesting that there is no acting in unison or cooperation on this issue between Executive parties. Diane Dodds mentioned that it was not good enough just to clap for or well-wish our healthcare staff. It is a rare occasion that I agree with the DUP, but I do on that point. I hope that the Member will do the logical thing and back my amendment, which joins the two issues together, and back the amended motion as well. Mark Durkan talked about pressures in Altnagelvin and the fact that porters and other staff had to leave, effectively, to go not just to Australia, as was the case in the past, but to other regions, such as the South, to get paid better. Órlaithí Flynn mentioned a similar issue. We are in a strange situation with the debate. We had a debate about a very important motion and lots of reference to the motion, but, aside from the Minister, there was not one fleeting reference to my amendment. The positive thinking in me surmises that that shows that there is unanimous support for the amendment, that Members have had a change of heart and now know the logic of what I and many other people would say. However, I suspect that there is something else going on. I am happy to give way to anybody who wants to state their opposition to the amendment, if that is the case. Nobody is keen to jump up. I hope, therefore, that Members will back the amendment rather than voting against something without explaining their logic. The principle about criticising the fact that hundreds of millions of pounds of public money — our money, taxpayers' money — is funding an unfair, two-tiered system is key.
It cannot be business as usual.
The Minister mentioned the "quantum of the figures". He tried to pour cold water on the figures that I quoted. Minister, you may wish to speak to your press team, because those figures were retrieved by 'Belfast Live' from your Department: your healthcare system. If the figures are wrong, find out from your staff why they are wrong. A bit of in-house work is therefore probably required at your end. The Minister also talked about my idealism and my being hypocritical — he made other swipes at me, which I will take — and he said that I had "quite the luxury". Minister, I remind you that you and other Ministers have the luxury of earning £90,000 a year. Some of our healthcare workers can only dream of earning a half or a third of that. I will not take any lectures from you or anybody else in the House about luxury. The Minister's Department has already broken pay parity by failing to implement this year's pay recommendation when it was announced. That is having a demoralising effect on workers. The effect that it is having on them cannot be overstated. They are sick and tired of being used as political pawns by the Executive and of the attitude of, "Yes, we'll clap for you and stand with a sign on the picket line with you, but when it comes to voting the right way — to back proper pay for you — we'll look the other way. We'll put our heads down". Nurses are using food banks. Some are homeless. Social care workers are out of pocket on travel. That is a disgraceful situation. The Minister cannot afford to pay our healthcare workers what they are owed, because he, as well as his predecessors, has already given the money to his mates in the private healthcare sector. Funnelling money away from the NHS into the private sector is a recipe for disaster. I urge Members to stop letting that happen. The first step to doing that is to back the amendment and then the motion as amended.
779 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.05 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.91).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.06 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.04 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.06 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.05 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.91 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.05 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.90 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.04 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.02 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.02 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.01 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:11 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
Disagree with this assessment?
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