Edwin Poots accuses Tory government of 'grotesquely stupid' effort to 'strong-arm DUP' back into Stormont by squeezing Northern Ireland's NHS budget

He was speaking after it was revealed that the Dublin government has stepped in to provide funding for 250 nurse training places at Northern Irish universities.

This comes after it was reported that 300 such places had been axed following the Tory-imposed budget which was imposed on the Province in April.

Although the money given to the health system 2023/24 was fractionally higher than last year (by £0.02bn), MLAs had complained that in the face of constantly-increasing demand on the NHS, the department needed a much bigger sum just to stand still.

"How stupid is the Northern Ireland Office?" Mr Poots said to the News Letter on Tuesday.

"In that the one thing we need is trained medical people. So making a cut on training nurses is utterly stupid - grotesquely stupid - to the point where they are actually hurting a community.

"But that's the level the NIO will sink to in terms of what they're trying to do and twist people's minds."

In terms of forcing the DUP back to Stormont?

"Yes," replied Mr Poots. "They have got a job to do, and that's to restore Northern Ireland's place within the Union.

"That's the UK government's job. Not to wreck the health service to try to strong-arm people to do something, when they have caused the problem in the first instance with the NI Protocol."

Mr Poots also said that the reported cost of the Dublin investment in the nurse training - 10 million euro - will pale in comparison to the amount of free healthcare given out to citizens of the Republic in Northern Irish hospitals along the border like Altnagelvin and Daisy Hill.

He said citizens will often travel north of the border for hospital treatment, "because they get it free of charge of course", unlike in the Irish republic where they are charged 100 euro if they turn up at casualty.

Mr Poots says the cost of treating citizens from the republican is something "which officially our trusts can claim back, but they haven't".

When the Tories announced NI's latest budget in April, Sir Jeffrey-Donaldson had accused Chris Heaton-Harris of "playing politics with some of our public services".

Mr Heaton-Harris had said at the time: “The purpose was not to punish anybody with this budget.

“The purpose of this budget is to make sure public services can continue in the absence of an executive.

“Now I do want to see an executive up and running and that’s why we continue to have talks with the DUP representatives and let’s see where they lead to.”

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