DUP former First Minister says UK government should be 'embarrassed' by fact Republic of Ireland is funding Northern Irish nursing places

Paul Givan also said that “it’s entirely counter-productive for the Conservative and Unionist Party” to keep on under-funding NI public services, because “they are undermining our arguments for NI remaining in the UK”.

This all comes after the Irish Times published a story on Saturday, saying that the Republic of Ireland has agreed to fund some 250 student nursing places in Northern Irish universities.

That story in turn had followed on from reports in May which said that NI’s Department of Health is set to axe fuding for 300 such places.

The Irish Times reported that 200 of the new Dublin-funded places are for students from the Republic of Ireland, and 50 are for students hailing from north of the border.

It quoted the Northern Irish Department of Health as saying that students will be able to work in either Northern Ireland or the Republic after qualifying.

It called the funding an “unprecedented cross-border move”.

According to the Irish Times, Stormont’s Department of Health said: “[The] NI health service will benefit from the fact students with ROI-funded nursing and midwifery training places in NI universities will do practical training here, making a vital contribution to care for patients…

"This planned one-year funding arrangement will be an important practical step in fostering future collaboration across the island of Ireland in the important area of healthcare training, which will be to the mutual benefit of our healthcare systems.”

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Mr Givan told the Nolan Show today that, when it comes to the nurse funding arrangements: “I think this crystallises the point that the DUP, and Gavin Robinson in particular, has been making around the structural failures of funding public services in Northern Ireland from the Treasury in London.

“We don’t have objective need being met, whenever the formula that’s calculating the money we receive from Barnett coming to NI, because they take a crude 3% approach based on our population [as part of the UK whole] and extrapolate that out in public funding.

"When the reality of course in NI is we’re a small economy, we don’t have the same economy of scale to finance and buy in services so it’s more costly to deliver services and that requires a different formula to give us the money – and that’s been stood up by the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, which is independent…

"That’s why I say the government should be embarrassed that the Republic of Ireland is putting money into the NI university system to finance the training of students, because that should be a UK priority, that they can deliver the nurses and midwives we need to deliver services in NI rather than a foreign jurisdiction.”

Mr Nolan asked “can you set your politics aside” to welcome the investment from Dublin, adding: “Can you thank the Irish government for investing here?”

Mr Givan replied: “We do have collaboration and indeed DUP health ministers have taken forward collaboration.

“Edwin Poots when he was health minister set up arrangements with Dublin when it came to paediatric heart surgery.

"We’ve a sharing of services in Altnagelvin in terms of cancer treatment for people in the north-west and Donegal.”

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