Member's statement: Independent-sector Care Workers: Pay
Member's statement by Mr Danny Donnelly on .
- MLA
- Mr Danny Donnelly
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 17 November 2025
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Independent-sector Care Workers: Pay
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5245079
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I, too, wish to raise serious concerns about the decision to exclude independent-sector care workers from the latest pay uplift and, equally, about the way in which the entire package has been managed. The Minister has confirmed that £209 million has been allocated to pay uplifts following the recommendations of the review bodies, but, to deliver that package, he has already committed £100 million from next year's budget. That is a significant decision to plug an immediate gap. Despite that extraordinary step, the award excludes the independent-sector workforce, which provides essential home care and social care services on behalf of the system. We are now in a position in which next year's Health budget has been compromised in advance, but care workers, who provide daily front-line support to many vulnerable people in our communities, have been left out. That raises clear questions: how can we justify spending next year's money on this year's pay deal while telling an essential part of the workforce that there is nothing for it, and why were pay uplifts not a priority for the Minister from the very beginning? The Department has said that funding to support the real living wage this year is not being made available. That contradicts commitments to stabilise the sector and to shift left, and it flies in the face of the repeated warnings from unions and providers about low pay driving chronic staffing shortages. By refusing to fund proper pay for those workers, the Minister is, effectively, undermining the very reforms that he keeps talking about. The whole idea of "shift left" is to invest in community support so that fewer people end up in hospital. However, if care workers continue to leave the sector because the pay does not match the responsibility, capacity in the community will fall even further. That means more delayed discharges, more pressure on acute beds and more avoidable admissions. We are witnessing a fragmented approach to pay, poor planning and a refusal to address part of the workforce, which will have huge impacts elsewhere on the system. Calling that "unprepared" would be generous; it is a repeated cycle of stopping one crisis while creating another. It is not credible to ask our hard-working care workers to accept that outcome while expecting to reduce waiting times and relieve winter pressures. Those workers are vital to keeping people independent, preventing hospital admissions and easing pressure on acute care. Excluding them is not just unfair; it is strategically unsound.
413 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: 0.03 (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 (0.97).
- 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 | 0.04 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.02 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.97 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.03 | 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 | 0.92 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.04 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.02 |
| Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits | 0.01 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.01 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:47 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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