Ms Ashley Connolly:

I thank the Senator for the question. I and my colleagues in the other health unions are engaged in the national joint council, where we meet senior management regularly. From Fórsa's perspective, these are long, drawn-out processes. They are not achieving outcomes speedily. I struggle to see them as a meaningful engagement, and that is my honest assessment. The first position, which was ignoring the fundamental issue of pay parity with our colleagues in the voluntary sector, just cannot be tolerated any longer. We have a two-tier system of people providing vital healthcare services, the services this State needs them to provide, but they are asked to take salaries thousands of euro less than those of our colleagues in the HSE. We have the unilateral withdrawal of the protections against long Covid, which we spoke to earlier. We became aware in June of last year that they were changing the scheme. We were notified after working hours that a new scheme was put in place. Our members' fear is what will happen in June, when that scheme is exhausted, and, therefore, whether they will be able to pay their mortgages. We cannot answer those questions because we are continually battling this bureaucratic environment where they have to go to the Department of Health, and the Department of Health has to go to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, which assesses this from the point of view of cost, not of what is needed to deliver the services to front-line patients and staff. We are always in this spiral.

What we need is for them to engage meaningfully. We need regular engagement. We need outcomes from these discussions, not continued delays or waiting for another letter to be received three or four weeks later, after which we respond. To date - my colleagues will testify to this, I have no doubt - we have sent numerous letters on the issue relating to the pandemic recognition payment to the Department of Health. We are yet to have a single meeting with the Department to discuss that matter. Not one meeting has taken place. We could fill that table over there with the number of letters we have sent to the Department of Health. It is not acceptable. No wonder those working in front-line health services feel the way they do. No wonder they feel neglected. No wonder they feel ignored. We have to relay to them that we cannot get a response from the Department of Health. It is just not acceptable at any level.

I do not want to take all the time because I know that my colleagues have very valid points to add.