Mr. Paul Bell:

I will read our submission into the record and the members and you, Chairman, are free to put questions to us. To start, I wish to note that a worker who was nominated to appear before the committee today was not available due to staff shortages in the area of operation.

On behalf of my union SIPTU, I am honoured to meet the committee today to discuss childcare for healthcare workers during the pandemic. At the outset, I will briefly introduce the SIPTU health division. It is a multi-grade representative health division with more than 42,000 members. Our membership covers a variety of settings, including nursing, midwifery, healthcare assistants, diagnostic and therapy health professionals, phlebotomists, the national ambulance service and support grades. Our division covers all areas of the health service including acute care, mental health, care of the older person, community care and intellectual disability.

While we note childcare is not an issue solely related to the gender of the parent, it must be stated that the contacts SIPTU received were overwhelmingly from working mothers who were desperately trying to secure childcare so they could go to work as essential healthcare workers in all the grades SIPTU represents. The following average applies to female gender balance within the relevant workforce: nursing and midwifery is 90.6%; health science and diagnostics is 78%; household is 80.2%; catering is 69.1%; healthcare assistants is 76%; home helps, who are also referred to as healthcare support assistants, is 96.4% and ambulance control is 50%. It should also be noted that SIPTU membership was represented within the following family demographics: co-parenting where both are essential workers, co-parenting where both are essential health workers and lone parent healthcare workers.

In reference to the issue of childcare for healthcare workers during the pandemic, it is not an exaggeration to confirm that this has been a leading issue for our members since the lockdown was enforced in mid-March 2020. The issue stands alongside several other key challenges which arose, such as lack of provision of personal protective equipment, PPE, lack of testing capacity, clusters in nursing homes and infection rates of healthcare workers who were becoming sick due to their work on the front line. Publicly, the HSE announced a survey had been undertaken to ascertain the number of healthcare workers who required childcare support. The HSE stated that the figure was 7,000. It is important to advise the committee that SIPTU representatives are unaware of any survey being undertaken and, if it was, how it was advanced given the challenges arising during the lockdown. To date, no member has advised SIPTU that he or she was offered or requested to participate, or participated, in the HSE survey to establish the childcare needs for essential healthcare workers.

SIPTU representatives suggest that the experience our members have had over the last number of months in seeking to secure childcare for their small children has been deeply frustrating, challenging and emotionally distressing as they have striven to meet the balance of ensuring the safety of their children while also ensuring that they were able to go to work and provide essential healthcare to their local community. In order to afford appropriate consideration of the challenges arising for healthcare workers securing childcare we must remember the environment within which these needs were arising. First, all childcare facilities were closed. Second, grandparents were cocooning. Third, childcare workers were reluctant to provide care in a healthcare worker's home due to concerns of infection risk given the role of the parent in the health service. Fourth, where childcare was able to be sourced members frequently conveyed their frustration at the increase in costs and their inability to fund this. Fifth, rosters within the health service are atypical and cover a 24-7 and 365 day service.

Given the combination of the deficit of childcare facilities and grandparents cocooning, the usual means of meeting roster challenges outside of Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. were not achievable.

Unfortunately, other factors also arose due to the rules which were put in place concerning general public health and the specific instructions which were given to public service employers which could not be departed from. Throughout the pandemic, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform issued regular updates and instructions through documents on frequently asked questions. These were designed to achieve uniformity across the public service in the instructions concerning application of Covid-19 leave and other matters. SIPTU argues the focus of the Government Department was to achieve uniformity rather than to find a fit which would assist parties in developing suitable arrangements to meet workplace and home life needs.