Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The next item in the correspondence was private contributions paid to nursing homes. The total contributions levied for collection in 2018 was €61 million. This is connected with the fair deal scheme, under which people have to make a contribution. I think we understand that. We raised the replacement of direct home help by agency staff here. The HSE puts the number of healthcare support assistants at 6,000. We have all seen at a local level that there was curtailment in some of the HSE's own staff weekend work over the summer period. I encountered this in a number of counties. They were being replaced by State agency staff. We also had the situation during the summer, which I found frightening, whereby when the HSE's own healthcare support staff went on annual leave during the summer, families were left with zero cover during that period, whereas if the service had been provided by agency staff, who have 52-week contracts, while the agency worker went on his or her two weeks' holidays he or she would have been replaced by an alternative agency worker. Therefore, in lots of homes in Ireland there were perhaps two different people providing the service: the HSE healthcare support providing the service at a certain time of the day and the agency staff perhaps doing something else at another time of the week. When it came to the holiday period, the HSE's own staff were not replaced. The families were told, "Go fend for yourselves." I have letters to confirm that. That is not the HSE's wording but it is the reality. However, the agency staff were covered because they had 52-week contracts. That is where that question came from, and people can read the correspondence. My worry is that now that the HSE has done this - to my knowledge, for the first time this summer - it will do it again at Christmas and at Easter. It has got its foot in the door this time in not providing holiday cover for its own staff, which I thought was dreadful. I have made my point.