Ms Maureen Cronin:

Could I comment on this? I am a bit nervous and my heart is pounding because I am not normally here like this in front of cameras and it is very difficult. It is difficult that we have got to here and I thank the committee for giving us a chance to speak. Something happened in the percentages in that award. Someone decided in 2007 that over their dead body would those people get that percentage. I believe that because I have worked full-time for 41 years in the public system and have never seen this happen. Someone had a hearts-and-minds issue in this regard, which I find disturbing and chilling. I should say I have worked for many years with civil servants; some of whom are my friends and have been colleagues for years. When I refer to civil servants, I am referring to some very small group of very powerful people who appear to be able to work independently. Somebody made the decision that we would not be getting this award and they have the capacity then to pass the parcel and send the fool further. We are blue in the face with the processes and have waited patiently. I am an accountant and have worked in finance all my life. We have senior hospital managers, engineers, architects, procurement specials in the group involved with this award and all of these people are basically the infrastructure underpinning the delivery of healthcare in our system. They are not the front-line people but they are the underpinning infrastructure. I still say "We" because I still feel very embedding in the HSE and I have just retired because my health, to be honest, was becoming an issue and the stress and the pressure was just too much. I have just left and I still feel I am part of it. We feel we are the system and if we were nurses we would not be sitting here today. Nobody would tolerate this. There would have been a strike a long time ago. We have held on and held on all through the FEMPI years. Then we had Covid-19. We have done 90-hour-weeks all through the pandemic. I have seen people put themselves into bad health and marriages gone from the amount of commitment put in by these people. Through all of that, we believed, foolishly really,that these send-the-fool-further things would end and eventually FEMPI would unwind. One of the letters, from the Secretary General I think, stated that when FEMPI was unwound, our people would have a review. None of these things mean anything. It is really about getting this issue away, off the desk, and sending a letter to a pensioner. The most recent letter is from August 2022 and seriously, you would have to be sedated to put up with what we are getting. The letter is telling a pensioner to go into the industrial relations machinery as if this person has landed from Mars. Do they not know we have already gone through all the industrial relations machinery? The highest court in the land in industrial relations is the Labour Court. It made a decision. The parties were even in agreement - there is not even a dispute - and yet somehow in the background, people are still able to not move. There is some kind of channel there or some kind of covert silo; I do not even know what to call it and have found it hard to put the words on it. There is something, however, that runs in parallel with the real system which is not transparent and these people are collaborating and making decisions. Bear in mind that some of our colleagues in the HSE got this award and we were just singled out. We are a blade of grass in the mouth of an elephant in terms of the overall award and are a tiny little group but it is just an exercise of sending the fool further, passing the parcel and telling us this is the process.

I apologise as I am a bit wound up. I will stop in a second. Our union wrote to the HSE on 30 September, now that FEMPI is fully unwound, and said that we would be in serious precipitative industrial action if this award is not now paid. As I sit here today 75 days later, that letter is unanswered. I find that absolutely staggering. Mr. Paul Reid has now left us but as the HSE CEO, he wrote in the latest published service plan that in terms of vaccination, testing, and tracing that this sustained response is only possible because of the extraordinary commitment, tenacity, and courage of an outstanding workforce where professionalism has been apparent in the performance of every role. I can tell you that if this was Brian Cody, he would not be treating his team in the way we have been treated. I believe this is a hearts-and-minds issue at its origin and it has been hammered and rehammered to the extent that we were sent a letter on 22 August to be told that the industrial relations machinery of the State is available to us.