Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank my Fianna Fáil Party colleagues for prioritising the issue of section 39 organisations as our first Private Members' business of 2018. Section 39 organisations are those bodies funded by the HSE that provide a range of vital health and disability services across the country. They include some of our local hospices, national organisations such as Rehab and the Irish Wheelchair Association, and local organisations like the Western Care Association in my constituency of County Mayo. I welcome to the Public Gallery representatives, including unions, of workers in section 39 organisations. Others are watching in because they could not travel to Dublin, unable to take time away from their important jobs.

Could the Minister of State imagine being the person with ministerial responsibility for disability services without section 39 organisations and their workers? His job is already difficult, but could he imagine how much more difficult it would be without the work they do? If he can imagine that, why can the Dáil not give them their proper funding? They provide essential services on a daily basis, including training and support to families in respite and to people with disabilities. They make life-ending illnesses a little easier on the patient and the patient's family. Just as the Tánaiste did this morning, the Government keeps insisting that workers in section 39 organisations are not public servants, but no one can deny that they and these organisations provide an essential public service.

There has long been a link between the pay of those employed directly by the Government via the HSE and so-called section 38 organisations and those who work in the independent section 39 organisations. That link has been confirmed by the Labour Court many times. It was confirmed by the Taoiseach to Deputy Micheál Martin in this Chamber on 8 November. It was reiterated in the manner in which the HSE implemented wage cuts under the Haddington Road agreement in 2014 and previous arrangements.

I have a letter written by a HSE area manager to a section 39 organisation in 2013. Among other points, it reads:

The clear intention is that all agencies including section 39 agencies are to make an appropriate and proportionate contribution to the implementation of payroll and related cost reduction measures, in line with other publicly funded bodies... The intention is that the menu of options and the underlying principles encompassed in the [Haddington Road agreement] will also be applied in respect of section 39 funded agencies and other voluntary providers and that their grants from the HSE will be adjusted accordingly... It is our intention [that is, the HSE's] to include in service agreements with all agencies, including those funded under section 39 the condition that staff should not be remunerated at levels above the statutory pay scales.

This letter was written on 7 October 2013. As such, it was clear in 2013 that the HSE was cutting its workers' salaries and that it considered that section 39 workers had to take the same reductions. They took them, as they also did in 2010.

If it was good enough then to apply reductions, why is the Minister of State now putting his head in the sand and not providing the HSE with the resources necessary to give increases in line with the pay restoration that the House discussed immediately prior to Christmas? It suited the Government at the time to say that reductions had to be applied, but it is now saying that section 39 workers are not public servants and, therefore, not entitled to pay restoration. The Government hammered them with the same cuts.

If someone is a home help worker, a palliative care nurse, a worker in disability services or working overnight in a respite house and employed by a section 38 organisation or the HSE, that person is on the pay restoration path. If someone is doing all those vital jobs under a section 39 organisation, that organisation will not have the resources to give him or her the same increase because the Government or the HSE has not provided the appropriate resources.

This situation cannot continue. These organisations are losing workers to the HSE and section 38 organisations. Vital skills and professionals are being taken from them because of the pay apartheid. Their capacity to provide essential services is being compromised on a daily basis. As some of them are not in a position to commit contractually under part 2 of the services schedule to a specific range of service provision, given that they cannot guarantee the availability of staff over this issue, the HSE is withholding further funding. That is a double whammy for some of these essential organisations.

This cannot continue. Members of the Dáil need to combine. On behalf of section 39 organisations, those who work in them and those who receive their services, it is time to say "Stop". It is time to put a process in place that will allow these workers to share in the pay restoration that their equivalents in HSE organisations are receiving. It is time to stop passing the parcel from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to the Department of Health and the HSE. When that parcel is opened in the end, there is nothing in it for workers who are providing essential services.

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