The island’s nurses have a further two strike days planned for this month.

They continue to protest over their pay and safer staffing levels.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members are set to gather at the roundabout on the A23 road near Noble’s Hospital for the third and fourth time this year on October 18 and 19.

Both strikes will be 12-hours, from 8am to 8pm.

This year members of the island’s biggest nursing union have marched outside the Tynwald building in protest, held two 12-hour strike actions and set out on a campaign bus tour as they express their frustration at the most recent pay offer from Manx Care (May 2023), which is a £1,000 consolidated payment for the year 2022-23 in addition to the 6% already awarded in November 2022.

The union originally said it’s looking for a 15% pay increase for its members, but in early September RCN’s regional director for the North West, Estephanie Dunn, said that figure isn’t specifically what their members are looking for.

Manx Care has repeatedly said it does not have the funding available to offer an enhanced deal, as it has exhausted its funding pot.

Since then Estephanie Dunn has said that ‘recent offers made to our members are an insult’, and ‘until there is a significantly improved offer, we will be forced back to the picket line’.

A large number of appointments and services will be postponed due to the back-to-back industrial action, but RCN say they will try to avoid as much disruption as possible.