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

Some months ago, I raised in Leaders' Questions the plight facing our hospices, employees in our hospices and indeed other section 39 organisations providing disability services and mental health services among others due to the Government's decision to exclude them from pay restoration agreements. There has been an unfair, cynical and downright dishonest approach to these organisations with regard to this issue. Funding has been deliberately withheld. Obfuscation has been the order of the day. The Minister for Health is now writing to the HSE to ask it to engage with these organisations to seek a greater and deeper understanding of the situation. I put it to the Taoiseach that that is insulting to those organisations and it is a joke. The HSE knows all about these organisations. It knows deeply about the plight that they are in, their financial situation and the issues surrounding pay restoration itself. I put it to the Taoiseach that those in organisations which provide up to 25% of disability services are being treated as second-class citizens while the Government loudly proclaims that it will ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and so on. That sort of hypocrisy drives people in this country mad. Employees who were used to a linkage with HSE pay scales are now treated as second-class citizens while, by the Government's own admission, they provide 25% of disability services. Employees in our hospices, the most cherished and universally lauded of our services, are treated like second-class citizens.

The issue has been to the Labour Court, which has adjudicated on this, saying that a pay linkage with the HSE exists and that where pay had either increased or decreased in the HSE, the pay rates of staff in Milford Care Centre had followed suit. This is a funding issue, not an industrial relations issue. I read in detail the Labour Court adjudication on this. I put it to the Taoiseach that the Government, for some reason, deliberately decided not to include the employees of these organisations within the pay envelope arising from the pay restoration agreements arrived at and, as a result, have put these organisations in deep trouble financially. More importantly, it has resulted in a huge drop in morale and huge recruitment challenges for the organisations themselves. When will the Government do the honest thing and accept that these employees are entitled to linkages with HSE employees and pay the organisations accordingly?

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