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UNISON PRESS RELEASE

22 September 2009

For Immediate Release

STATEMENT FROM PATRICIA McKEOWN REGIONAL SECRETARY

HEALTH SERVICE CRISIS – TIME TO TELL THE TRUTH!

It is time to end rumour and speculation about health cuts.   The service in the grip of a financial crisis.  Services are being slashed, patients are being affected and jobs are being lost.

All the rumours of wholesale bed closure are true.  They impact not only on the Belfast Health Trust but right across Northern Ireland. 

UNISON expects formal announcements that hundreds of beds will be removed from our already overstretched health system.   The rumours about the City, the Royal and the Ulster are true and there are others yet to be declared.  Further services will be stripped out from their current locations such as Whiteabbey Hospital  and Mid Ulster Hospital and thousands of jobs will be affected.

Every Health Trust is in the grip of a financial crisis totalling at least £65m.    UNISON predicted this 2 years ago when we campaigned against the cuts on the NI health and social services budget.  There is cold comfort in being right.

Politicians and senior administrators must stop talking pretending that this is about health care improvement.    It is also no longer about ‘efficiency’.   Patient care is already affected at primary, acute and community care level.  The latest proposals cut at the heart of health care and front line services.

UNISON is gearing up to take this fight into the public arena.  Somebody has to stand up for our health service.  Once again it will be left to front line health workers to defend them on behalf of us all.    UNISON activists in the Belfast Trust are assembling in emergency meeting mode this afternoon.    Health workers in White abbey and Mid Ulster are being called together by the union tomorrow and plans are being laid for meetings across the entire health service.

Patricia McKeown said “Every community in Northern Ireland will be affected by what is happening in health.  Existing health inequalities are set to grow.   If you just lost your job in Visteon, Nortel or Seagate you need your health and social services more than ever.    If you are a local farmer or business trading with the health service your contracts are under threat.  If you are a local retailers depending on people with jobs in health care – as most communities in Northern Ireland do – then their job less threatens your livelihood too.

Unless our politicians take direct action now to re-organise the health budget then we face the single most effective way of dragging Northern Ireland deep into depression.   We have run out of time.   UNISON is rising to this challenge.    We will demonstrate and where there is no alternative we will take industrial action.   We urge everyone else to join us.