Mr. Paul Mac Flynn:

I apologise. The Chair mentioned the teacher’s salary and I should say I am intimately acquainted with those figures from the beginning. The way to think about this is, as Dr. McDonnell mentioned earlier, there is a difference in cost of living North and South. It is not quite as simple as one up, one down. That will necessarily affect a difference in wages North and South. Looking across the economy and the private sector, you are more likely to see smaller wage gaps in occupations and sectors that are much more mobile. For example, construction is one where when there is a significant wage difference, it is much easier for that to be closed by the competition for workers that would take place. It is harder for work that is more location-based.

The public sector stands out from all of that. You only have to look at pay levels in the public sector and what has happened to them over the past 13 years. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which came out last month, showed that the full-time public sector wage in Northern Ireland, when adjusted for inflation, is now back to the same level it was in 1998. Before the cost-of-living crisis and this more acute phase of it – bear in mind, the UK experienced a much higher level of inflation after 2016 because of the devaluation of sterling – year-on-year, public sector wage increases that have been possible under the UK budget settlement have been minimal. Therefore, wages have been losing buying power year after year. Add in the current cost-of-living crisis and that just has exploded. Yes, those are the figures for teachers. It is harder sometimes to compare when you get into civil service grades and stuff like that.

The public sector stands apart from the rest of the economy with regard to those wage differentials. However, that is not natural, rather, it is imposed. It is not occurring due to anything happening within the Northern Ireland economy. It is externally imposed and it is getting worse as we speak because of the current constraints on the Northern Ireland budget. The limited pay settlements that have been made in the public sector in the UK and England, particularly in the NHS, are not being given to Northern Ireland because it is being fiscally punished for having overrun in its previous year’s budget due to inflationary pressures. Those figures are stark but there is a much simpler explanation for those than there is for the rest of the economy.