Northern Ireland’s health minister has called for a “reality check” over the funding of the region’s health service. The Department of Health receives the biggest slice of the funding distributed in Stormont budgets. Despite this, Mike Nesbitt has already projected his department is looking at a funding gap of around £400 million for 2025/26. He described a situation that will be “impossible” if his department does not receive “significant” allocations in in-year monitoring rounds.
Appearing before the Stormont Health Committee on Thursday afternoon, Mr Nesbitt warned of significant increases in costs, including pay and price inflation, increased national insurance contributions for GPs, pharmacists and social care providers, and rising demand. Mr Nesbitt is aiming to plug the projected £400m gap by the health trusts finding £200m in new savings and allocations from in-year monitoring funds.
But he warned that finding that level of savings is “ambitious and very challenging”. Mr Nesbitt also pointed out that the draft Northern Ireland budget provides no additional funding for waiting list reduction initiatives for the second consecutive year, and referred to reports which have found the health and social care service needs more funding. He urged MLAs on the health committee against “traditional tit-for-tat exchanges”, as well as calls for efficiencies to be found as well as more funding to be directed into specific areas.
“The stark reality is that we need to be honest about the current and projected demand pressures on health and social care,” he said. “Frankly, there needs to be a reality check. The notion that our health budget should not grow any further is delusion on stilts. Demand is always growing and the pressure for increased spending across many different services is immense, and members, I believe, from all parties know this.
“Because when they are not telling me to live within my budget and suck it up, they are calling on me to spend more across a vast range of areas. That’s part of the pressure. “If we want to get waiting lists down, that will require investment. If we want more care outside of hospital, that will require investment. If we want to invest more in staffing, that too comes with a price.”. He referred to official projections that the population aged 65 and over is projected to increase by 49.6% between mid-2022 and mid-2047, and the number of over-85s is projected to increase by 122.2% over the same period.
“Increased life expectancy is a massive achievement for society and modern science but when it comes to inescapable realities for public services and public spending, older people need more health care and more social care,”. “Demand will grow very sharply and that has massive budgetary implications. “Yes, we can do things differently. In some areas we can slow the increase in costs but let’s not pretend we can reduce or virtually freeze health spending while providing the level of services we want and that the public demand.”.
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