By Marie-Louise Connolly

Copyright bbc

In 2024, BMA NI, the union which represents and negotiates on behalf of doctors, asked for an additional £80m for their 25/26 contract. Instead, they received £1m.

In a very public fall out in May, the health minister told the assembly that due to budgetary constraints he was imposing a contract on GPs.

Nesbitt also said that “he wasn’t looking for a fight”.

But four months on, the BMA has said the mood music hasn’t improved and they feel the department door has been shut.

Dr Ciaran Mullan, a GP at the Riverside Practice in Strabane, said this is the first time a health minister has chosen to impose the GMS (General Medical Services) contract on GPs.

“We are very unhappy and angry and feel disrespected especially how it was delivered in the assembly – we’d spent a lot of time in our negotiations, and you would not hear any other profession being spoken to like that,” he said.

Making the announcement, Nesbitt mentioned the difficulty the public have accessing their GP as well as the projected £600m gap between available funding and the cost of maintaining existing services this year.

In a statement, DoH said the 2025/26 GMS contract had an additional £9.5m investment, including £5m additional investment in GP indemnity costs.

According to the department, the total investment in general practice in 2025/26 would be £414m.