Editorial: It is telling that most Northern Ireland civil servants take no sick leave at all

It is yet another worrying indication of public service in Northern Ireland.

But there is an uplifting, and easily overlooked, figure in the new figures from NISRA – the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.

While they show that the average number of days lost to sickness per employee in 2023/2024 stood at 13.8, almost as high as back in 2004/05, when it stood at 14.2, they show a much more encouraging statistic.

Some 57% of civil servants did not take any days off sick.

The problem is caused by a substantial minority of workers, 15% of the total, who have long-term sick absence, causing the overwhelming bulk of the overall leave.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that three out of five civil servants had no sick leave at all.

The old spirit of public service is still very much there. It is all the more important that we remember that when so many public workers are operating under stress, caused at times indeed by the high levels of absence among colleagues.

Sick leave is not a problem restricted to the public service. The private sector is suffering from it too, and it has all become worse since lockdown, both here and in the rest of the UK, indeed in the rest of the western world.

This will not be tackled by any one segment of workers in Northern Ireland alone. Having said that, the civil service does have a particular problem and yet you will not hear this emphasised by Stormont politicians, who talk as if NI is only ever a victim (of cuts, etc), never actually contributing to its own problems.

The civil service has had very bad periods of sick leave in the past, eg that even worse time 20 years ago. It improved. It can – and must – begin to improve again, and reduce these levels of leave.