August 28th 2026


The Workers Party is calling on the incoming Health Minister to examine the number of health service structures across Northern Ireland before reconfiguring hospitals and services. In February 2025 Mike Nesbitt acknowledged that “off contract expenditure is not a cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money. It can lead to a lack of workforce continuity, with the potential to undermine safe care and staff morale.”

Some reforms have followed but there are currently 6,500 unfilled nursing vacancies and pressure may be placed on managers to use temporary agency staff. The new Minister must guarantee that these vacancies will be filled as soon as possible but not by nurses from temporary staff agencies.

Moreover, they must also investigate bureaucratic structures that drain hundreds and millions of pounds from the overall health budget. He must ask some key questions: are they fit for purpose? Do they add value to the delivery of quality health care for patients and services users? Is all this level of bureaucracy necessary? They were originally set up to facilitate the internal market but the rush to privatisation will surely have changed those plans.

The Workers Party in our submission to the health consultations have challenged the previous minister and the department to justify the existence of six health trusts each with their own senior and middle management structures, trust boards, chairs, executive directors, non-executive directors. These multiple structures are unnecessarily siphoning finances from the overall budget of the health service.

The news that the highest paid executive in our health service received £40,000 in additional pay awards in the past two years is jaw dropping. Staff who have not had their pay increase because of a lack of funding will quite rightly be angry as will patients who have seen services cut because of funding issues.