Ms Louise McGirr:

Yes. It was agreed there would be an overall 8% increase for section 39s. That was agreed last year, in 2023, and concerns Building Momentum but I will talk about the new agreement as well. On that, we have provision within the Revised Estimates for over €27 million to pay our portion of it. A lot of this falls to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth now because many of those organisations are providing disability services.

As I understand it, and potentially this is what the Chair is talking about, there had been delays with those payments or the payments did not go out immediately. The process is now much more efficient than we had with the 300. Two weeks ago, the HSE was instructed to make advance payments of 70% of the overall estimated cost of those salary increases. That should be with them within the next two weeks. That is the information I have, so those payments, or initial payments, of the 8% can begin to be made. The balance and the auditing piece, etc., will be worked out after the initial payment is made.

The WRC agreement last year also had a commitment that once there was a new pay deal, we would go into further discussions with those sections 39s on the implications of that deal for them. We are reflecting on commencing that after the announcement of the new pay deal. There has been good progress.