Ailing health service is not beyond repair says DUP MP Jim Shannon

The MP’s comments come as NI health trusts appealed for staff to come in over new year to deal with various crises. It also coincides with emergency departments being inundated.

Mr Shannon said: "Can the health service be fixed? I'm a great believer in trying to be positive – I think yes, it can. I think there has to be a radical change.

"First of all we have to pay our nurses and our staff a reasonable wage. That's easy to say, but you have to look at how that can be achieved. I think we need to stop employing agency staff who are more expensive. There's not enough full time staff so we have to employ more, give them a wage in line with the cost of living. If you give them a decent wage they'll stay."

He said he supported the striking nurses: "I think the government should open negotiations, to say they're not going to open talks is illogical whenever the key problem is the nurses’ wages. If you don't talk you can't fix things."

On the subject of health reforms, he continued: "I think we're maybe a bit heavy in middle management. I'm not saying we should lay people off but do we need all the middle management? We definitely need nurses and doctors and all the frontline staff.

"Centralisation has got to be part of it as well. When you talk about centralisation people get a bit anxious, myself included. But in some cases that is what has to happen.

"You have to, for example, have core services in a hospital like Enniskillen so that people don't have to travel to Altnagelvin for cancer treatment."