Northern Ireland could face a wave of strikes unless Stormont signals some financial restraint

Police officers, who were also unhappy, have now got a backdated pay rise of 2.5%.

Nurses, who actually did strike, won cross-party assurances of pay parity with Great Britain, and they are now happy.

Lecturers are on strike over pensions, pay and what they call “equality, casualisation and workloads”.

All of these categories of public sector workers attract significant amounts of public goodwill. They will all get widespread support for their threats of industrial action, or even for the industrial action itself if it happens.

But while that goodwill is there, these various disputes raise profound questions about political priorities, now that Stormont has returned. There has been cross party criticism of the UK government for supposedly failing to support Northern Ireland financially to the level that it is said to need.

But is this critique in fact fair?

Since the onset of the Troubles, both Labour and Conservative governments have been very generous to the Province.

Republicans will never accept such generosity, because it suits them to depict the UK as penny pinching, and so to say that Irish unity is a better outcome for this part of the island.

The other Stormont parties need to overlook this posturing, and have a serious discussion about financial priorities.

Almost everyone agrees, for example, that health is a key priority, yet most of the parties have acquiesced in thwarting the reform of NHS provision that experts have unanimously been recommending for 20 years. That refusal means health money is spent less efficiently than it would otherwise be.

But unless such politically difficult financial decisions are taken, and unless there is a cross party commitment to some level of public sector pay restraint, then every agreed pay demand will lead in turn to another demand. And soon enough, NI could be paralysed by strikes.