Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no point in the Taoiseach saying that we all support hospices and then he screws them. That is what he has been doing on this issue for the past six months. It is utterly dishonest. The replies from the Minister and from the Taoiseach are dishonest. The hospices' non-pay costs have increased significantly. We all have correspondence from the hospices on the matter.

It is very simple. The pay linkage should be restored. The Taoiseach can refer to the legislation but we all know the difference between section 39 bodies and the HSE. The bottom line is that the HSE made it very clear that they would use the service level agreement to ensure that the section 39 bodies honoured the pay cuts, or in other words, if they did not, the HSE would cut their funding and do so to the equivalent level that it would identify. This is terrible blackguarding that is going on here. It is time to get rid of all the verbiage and the nonsense. The hospices raise most of the capital funding and 25% to 30% of their current funding themselves, and the public contributes to that. We carry on with this play acting here, pretending that there is some sort of wall between these bodies and the public pay scales. There has always been a link. They, along with the other section 39 bodies, have been excluded from the implementation of the new agreements, wrongly in my view, and in a very dishonest way.

It should be rectified as a matter of urgency because these staff will not be able to afford to continue over the next three years due to the breaking of the link between pay scales in respect of pay restoration by the Taoiseach's Government and the HSE.

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