Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Under section 39 of the Health Act 2004, many voluntary providers employ hundreds of home help workers who carry out a low-paid job on the front line of our health services. Since February 2013, I have raised with successive Ministers for Health, Senator James Reilly, Deputy Varadkar and Deputy Harris, the issue that the last Government and the current one are in breach of two Labour Court recommendations whereby these workers are due to be paid four and a half weeks pay per annum in lieu of pension entitlements. These are low-paid workers who are owed money by the State. I have raised the issue by way of parliamentary question on numerous occasions. The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, recently said that the Government is unable to come to an arrangement for this payment under the Lansdowne Road agreement. These are the lowest paid workers in the health sector and they are owed a paltry sum of a few hundred euro. However, that sum is very important to them. I ask the Taoiseach, in his last weeks in office, to take the bull by the horns on this issue I have been raising for more than four years and to pay these low-paid, front-line home help workers in the health service money the State owes them in lieu of pension entitlements.

I ask the Government to take Labour Court recommendations 19297 and 19299 very seriously. The previous Government and the current Government have been ignoring my calls for four years. Now is the time to do something about it and pay these workers what they are due.

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