The welfare of nurses is a key priority but they are wrong to strike

Nurses are admired across society for the vital work that they do, in trying circumstances.

Many of the difficulties experienced in nursing relate to wider problems that are not easy to solve, including a shortage of nurses in many European countries.

Consider Germany, for example, one of the richest and best organised societies in the world – it has a grave shortage of nurses.

In Northern Ireland we have other major NHS problems, some of them very much of Stormont’s making.

MLAs have refused to reform health provision, as urged by expert reports for 20 years. The health service is run less efficiently than it could be run, with a smaller number of better hospitals.

Nurses feel that they are significantly underpaid, as do many workers in many types of work. Barely anyone in either public or private employment is getting a pay rise commensurate with 11% inflation. The only workers to have got inflation-proof rises are employees at the bottom pay scale of organisations that have given flat rate rises, in which the lowest paid gain the most in percentage terms (which is fair, given that the lowest paid suffer most from fuel rises)

But across the board 11% pay rises would embed such price rises. Already inflation is falling back slightly, as forecasters said it would. Oil, petrol, diesel and even gas prices are down, albeit still horribly expensive.

Other factors are little mentioned in these strikes, such as the fact that public sector employees get far, far better pensions than private workers, thus pushing up the overall value of public remuneration.

Improving the lot of nurses is an important priority for the NHS, but withholding their labour and thus worsening waiting lists is not the right way to achieve that important outcome.