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

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly on this very important motion on reimbursing staff of section 39 agencies. I raised the issue several times in this House during 2017 and, in particular, in support of the claims of the workers of the Irish Wheelchair Association. I made several representations to the Ministers for Health and Public Expenditure and Reform and, indeed, to the Taoiseach during Leaders’ Questions on 21 June last year. The Taoiseach, of course, gave the usual disingenuous answer by saying he would take a dim view of any organisation that used its block grant to give the proper increases to its workforce. I also wrote to the Taoiseach and to the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Harris, on 19 December asking that they intervene and provide the requisite additional funding to the HSE urgently. I also raised the matter at the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in the context of budget 2018.

The additional funding is long overdue following the Labour Court recommendation of 20 November, which found that pay scales between staff of section 39 organisations and public servants in the same roles in section 38 organisations and the HSE generally are indeed aligned and therefore must be restored. At the end of March last year, the Not for Profit Association, of which the Irish Wheelchair Association is a member, met the HSE to discuss the matter of pay restoration for member organisations and their staff. While the staff of section 39 organisations are not technically State employees, their pay scales had been historically aligned and during the crash the same pay cuts were imposed on section 39 staff. The HSE’s and the State’s refusal to provide additional funding to realign these pay scales has put these vital agencies and organisations under great strain, as Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan has just described.

The HSE directed that the Irish Wheelchair Association, IWA, would have to go through the State’s industrial relations machinery to determine whether the pay scales were aligned and pay restoration due. The IWA and SIPTU took part in a conciliation conference which was unsuccessful because of the obduracy of the HSE and the State.

On 4 September, the matter was referred to the Labour Court. The Irish Wheelchair Association has never denied that pay restoration is due to its hard-working and dedicated staff, who are completing the same work as diligently as their counterparts in section 38 organisations but for less money. It has merely said that additional funding would be required from the HSE to meet those pay demands. The IWA was unable to meet pay restoration demands from 1 April last year. The Labour Court hearing was held on 31 October 2017 and provided its recommendations exactly in line with what we had expected. It recommended that the pay scales are indeed aligned and therefore pay restoration is due. I thank Mr. Paul Bell of SIPTU for giving us information around that process.

Before Christmas, a copy of the Labour Court recommendation LCR21609 was forwarded to the Taoiseach and the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Harris. It makes for very interesting reading, especially given the consistent statements in this House by those Ministers that pay was not linked between section 38 and section 39 organisations. We knew, of course, that this would be the outcome of the Labour Court recommendation and that those pay scales were indeed linked. During the crash, when pay cuts were imposed the recommendation was that if workers had benefited from pay linkages when salaries increased then they could not seek to break from those linkages when salaries went down. Of course, SIPTU put forward this same argument once pay restoration for public servants began under the Lansdowne Road agreement.

The Labour Court recommendation of 20 November stated: “The Court has given careful consideration to the submissions of both parties and is clear that the worker’s pay is clearly aligned with the HSE pay scales.” The last paragraph of the recommendation is of utmost importance. Many trade union representatives and leaders of these organisations fear that the current impasse is a delaying tactic by the Government and the HSE and that every section 39 organisation will have to go through the same long drawn-out industrial relations process. The Labour Court recommendation states:

It appears to the Court that one of the reasons that this matter is before it, is because the Employer feels obliged to do so, in order to satisfy an administrative requirement of the HSE, which is its main funder, rather than to seek a resolution. It is not a function of the Labour Court to provide an administrative endorsement to meet the requirements of a third party who is external to the case at hand and any process requiring such an endorsement could be considered, [sic] to be an abuse of the Industrial Relations process.

This is very clear, yet the additional funding has still not been forthcoming. The IWA wrote to the HSE on 24 November to seek confirmation of when the additional funding would be provided. Almost a month later, just before Christmas, the IWA had only received an acknowledgement of the letter. SIPTU has therefore advised the IWA that members will be balloted for strike action, set for 14February 2018. The case has been very strongly made that these workers' pay scales should be restored. They were cut during the height of the bank bailout. I welcome the motion before us.

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