Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In 1960, a small group of wheelchair users came together to form the Irish Wheelchair Association, IWA, with the aim of trying to improve the lives of people with physical disabilities in Ireland. The Irish Wheelchair Association has now grown to a network of 20,000 members with 2,300 staff and many more volunteers. Resource and outreach services are provided to over 2,000 people in 57 locations. Some 1.17 million hours of assisted caring services are provided to 1,863 people per annum. As their website states, all IWA staff, including the CEO and senior management, are paid in compliance with Department of Health, public service and HSE guidelines in relation to salary scales and rates of pay. No additional payments are made to any member of staff.

Last Friday, I met the IWA's CEO, Ms Rosemary Keogh, and the advocacy officer, Ms Joan Carthy. In that briefing I was told that in recent weeks the HSE advised that 20% of the IWA's funding will be withheld until it signs a service level agreement. Some 20% of the funding has now been withheld for the March payments. This is significant as the CEO says that no service could sustain such a cut without an impact on services. Ultimately, it is the people with disabilities and their families who will suffer.

The Irish Wheelchair Association along with Rehab, Enable Ireland and many smaller bodies are so-called section 39 organisations. This means that under section 39 of the Health Act 2004 these voluntary providers signed up to service level agreements and receive funding to provide certain services. Those agencies, of which in 2014 there were more than 1,800, are part-funded under section 39 of the Health Act. Under section 38, the HSE may enter into an arrangement with a service provider on its behalf. Under section 39 the HSE may give assistance to a person or body to provide a service that is similar or ancillary to a service that the executive may provide.

On 3 May, in reply to a parliamentary question, the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, said that any individuals employed by these section 39 organisations are not HSE employees and, therefore, the HSE has no role in determining the salaries or other terms and conditions applying to these staff.

The Minister went on to say that section 39 staff are not subject to the provisions of public service agreements or the FEMPI legislation. It is regrettable that the Minister for Health is not here this evening, but I appreciate that the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, is present. In his reply, the Minister for Health was clearly ignoring the earlier decisions of the HSE and his own predecessors, as the HSE imposed pay cuts on section 39 staff in 2009. The pay scales had been linked for many years. It seems the Minister wants to have one rule when cuts must be imposed and another rule when restoration is due.

Irish Wheelchair Association salaries are clearly linked to HSE pay scales and section 39 staff were, in fact, treated like public servants. It is also clear that section 39 organisations' pay scales have been linked to HSE section 38 pay scales for over 15 years. The Irish Wheelchair Association informs me that the HSE cut funding to section 39 organisations in 2009 and instructed them to impose pay cuts in order to guarantee sustainable services.

Under the Lansdowne Road agreement, however, public sector pay is finally beginning to be restored and yet the HSE has confirmed that no funding is available to section 39 organisations to meet the cost of the pay restoration measures required.

The HSE's decision creates an intolerable situation for the Irish Wheelchair Association, Rehab, Enable Ireland and the other bodies concerned. The result is that home support workers and others in the large section 39 organisations are doing exactly the same work but receive different levels of pay depending on whether they are employed by a section 38 or 39 organisation.

Equally urgent is the fact that the IWA has been unable to meet the cost of the €1.34 million needed for pay restoration under the Lansdowne Road agreement this year, nor was it able to meet the €290,000 increase last year. As such, it has said that this "impacts seriously and immediately on our ability to fulfil our responsibility under the service arrangements, as well as the standards required by statutory agencies such as HIQA". The IWA was unable to sign the service arrangement by the end of February.

The Minister, Deputy Harris, who unfortunately is not with us, told the IWA in February that he wanted a quiet and quick resolution of this matter, which is putting IWA, Rehab and Enable Ireland staff under intolerable pressure. I urge the Minister of State to ensure that the Minister gets a settlement very quickly.

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