Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this issue today. I have been trying to raise it for the past six or seven weeks. Eventually, my time has come.

To provide background to the situation, this concerns the Cheshire home group and, in particular, my local one in Tullow in County Carlow. Cheshire Ireland is a non-profit provider that is predominantly funded by the HSE. It currently provides support services in 17 different residential centres in addition to a range of community-based services throughout the country. It employs approximately 700 people.

A new policy on residential support for persons with disabilities has been agreed between the HSE and resident services providers. This policy is outlined in Time to Move on from Congregated Settings - A Strategy for Community Inclusion, which was published by the HSE in 2011. It aims to provide residents of congregated settings with alternative accommodation and care services in mainstream communities. In order to implement the policy, the Cheshire home group, as has other residential care service providers, has proposed to progressively close all their institutions that are serving ten or more people by not later than 2019. As the Minister of State knows, this process is currently under way and will result in compulsory redundancies of a number of catering and domestic staff.

The Cheshire home group has experienced financial difficulties in recent times and since 2008 has been in severe difficulty. In an effort to counteract these difficulties, it entered into an agreement with SIPTU, the INMO and Unite in 2014 under the Labour Relations Commission. As part of that agreement, the HSE was to fund a number of the outstanding issues of the Cheshire home group. This was supposed to happen by December 2015 at the very latest. As of today, it has not happened. Almost all the staff have been made redundant in my local Cheshire home which is almost closed as most of the service users have been moved out to the community-based services.

A commitment was given that no more staff would be made redundant until this issue was resolved. My understanding is that staff are to be made redundant in the next number of days and this issue still has not been resolved. What is the position regarding the commitment made as part of the Labour Relations Commission agreement?

When will the HSE's commitment to make redundancy payments be honoured? I ask the Minister to give a commitment that no one will be made redundant until this issue has been resolved.

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