Category: Public Services
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Northern Ireland ambulance service response times more than twice target
Lack of recruitment leaves no possibility of filling the NIAS staffing gap in next five years Unite has challenged the ongoing failure of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) to meet its response time targets and called for a new ambitious approach to recruitment to fill the staffing gap. The union has released statistics highlighting…
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Northern Ireland Executive must ringfence public sector apprenticeship funding
Skills shortages looming as Translink fails to confirm restoration of suspended apprenticeship scheme because of funding squeeze Unite which represents frontline workers across the public sector in Northern Ireland has called on the executive to ring-fence funding in the budget for public sector and local council apprenticeships. Under current Stormont rules public sector and arms-length…
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Time for Stormont to end exclusion of public sector from apprenticeship funding
To mark the beginning of Northern Ireland Apprenticeship Week 2026 (today, Monday 2 February), Unite has released a report highlighting the current exclusion of public bodies from funding for apprenticeships. Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK which excludes public bodies from accessing funding support arising from the Apprenticeship Levy. The Unite research…
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Health and social care workers in Northern Ireland in strike ballot
Unite to ballot members following failure of department of health to deliver pay parity and safe staffing Unite is to ballot over 4,500 workers in Northern Ireland’s health and social care system, for industrial action. This follows the failure of the department of health to deliver on pay parity and safe staffing. The union has…
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Response failures highlights need to end NI ambulance staffing crisis
Paramedics are almost into third year of industrial action over unacceptable working conditions Unite has released responses to a freedom of information (FoI) request on staffing shortfalls and the resulting failure to meet targets for ambulance response times. The figures obtained show that in May there were 135 frontline vacancies in the Northern Ireland Ambulance…